


From Files To Physicality

by DictionaryWrites



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Ankh-Morpork, Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Celibacy, Class Differences, Complicated Relationships, Denial of Feelings, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Emotionally Repressed, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Magical Accidents, Musical Instruments, POV Alternating, Pining, Politics, Unseen University, Wizards
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-10-24 04:56:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 59,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17698064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: (This fic is readable for Discworld peeps even if you've never read Good Omens, so don't worry about the addition of GO peeps.)Every March, Rufus Drumknott plays piano for one of the more disobedient file rooms at the Unseen University. This year, due to an unexpected misfiling, he finds himself plagued by strange and unusual dreams, and they begin to have the most dreadful effect on his work. Lord Vetinari, his employer, is...uncertainof  these developments, and the effects they begin to have on his own life.





	1. Chapter 1

The halls of Unseen University, some of the most prodigious[1] on the Disc, go mostly unexplored. There are many reasons for this. Ordinarily, phrases like “unexplored corridors made centuries past" conjure up images of sprawling ruins, undisturbed by another living soul for periods of time unfathomable, but in fact, the halls of Unseen University are, as a rule, _crawling_ with wizards[2].

It is simply the fact that these wizards do not, for the most part, explore.

There are certainly wizards of an exploratory nature within the university’s halls, but it is generally considered advantageous, both to the wizards in question and to the general state of space-time, to keep them exploring the metaphysical, the metamagical, the literary, and that sort of thing, as opposed to letting them explore the university itself.

They mostly don’t want to.

Oh, they _think_ about it, yes. There is nary a wizard in the world that doesn’t lie awake in his bed of a night, wondering _exactly_ what is behind that red-painted door marked over with bronze studs in the Portrait Corridor[3], or wondering _exactly_ what he might meet were he to walk into that archway beside the alchemical workshop on the third floor, which is always pitch-dark, no matter how close you get with a bright candle[4]. What prevents him is a natural Procrastination Field held in the Unseen University.

Most universities have a Procrastination Field – in any place where academics gather in any great amount, the field is naturally generated as a result of their habits, and amplified by any thaumic energies in the vicinity, and the average university will have an extensive Procrastination Field, many of which span so far as to cover the university’s surrounding area, meaning that even students living on the other side of the city will be further discouraged from proceeding with essays and revision, and indeed affecting the work of the average individual, too. In the Unseen University’s case, the Procrastination Field was quite specialised, and certain things were almost impossible not to procrastinate – along with the usual key pressure points of a Procrastination Field (finally responding to that letter Aunt Roberta from three weeks ago, which was mostly about the health of her cats and had left the reader stumped as to how to respond without asking, however politely, for more of the same; finally putting the dishes, having been washed, from the dishrack and putting them back away; fixing that awful squeak in the door; et al.), the one at Unseen University affected its faculty and students to procrastinate some crucial elements too. One of these things procrastinated was exploration of x or y funny oddity in the university.

Some individuals are immune even to the most potent Procrastination Fields, of course, and now and then a student will go off wandering in search of some deeper curiosity, and never return, likely cursed to some untimely death[5].

 Another enemy of the humble Procrastination Field, of course, is alcohol.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Come on, come on!” hissed the voice of one Henry Whittle, laughing as he stumbled down the basement corridor. This corridor was the realm of all of the Unseen University’s file rooms, of which there were quite a few, and there were rumours that within one of them, there was a room entirely full of baboons. This, of course, was not the room Henry Whittle, inspirited by a rather excessive amount of rum, was looking for: _he_ was looking for the _other_ rumoured (but unlikely) file room, in which naked iconographs of every wizard to attend Unseen University were apparently kept readily to hand[6].

Henry Whittle was one of those young men that was invariably described as handsome, more because there was little else to comment on in regards to his figure or personality than because he was handsome in any sort of exceptional way. Mr Whittle possessed blandly attractive features: blue eyes, dark hair of a naturally floppy sort, a handsome chin, favourable cheekbones, a modest cupid’s bow for a mouth, and so on, but these features were _so_ blandly attractive that one rather forgot his face as soon as one walked away. Mr Whittle’s personality, which one had to look very hard in order to determine beyond “cheery”, was all but negligible, and this only lended itself further to complete amnesia of his person.

“ _Henry_ ,” whined his companion, a rather put-upon, smaller, and younger wizard named Dripp. He often whined: his voice had a very wet, nasal quality that naturally inclined to such things. Horace Dripp was one of those unfortunate souls whose name quite entirely reflected his person. Tall in a gangly sort of way, his camel-coloured robes had the unfortunate appearance of trying to creep from his body in favour of the floor, and he poured in an unsightly and liquid fashion down any flight of stairs he encountered: his nose, which was mercifully rather small, continuously ran, and his eyes had a downcast and rheumy quality that reminded his reluctant conversational partners of a sickly Pekinese. Currently, a wobbling stalagtite of yellow-green mucus was hanging from the end of his nose and threatening, visibly, to fall into his eternally ajar mouth. Mr Dripp was _not_ very easy to forget, although people tried their best nonetheless.

Dripp and Henry were friends, in the sense that Dripp followed Henry around, and it never occurred to Whittle to deter him. They did almost everything together, and since their second year at UU (they were now well into their fourth), they had shared a room together in the dormitories. Whittle did not especially _like_ Dripp, but he liked that someone paid such close attention to him; Dripp did not especially like Henry, but Henry had once clapped him on the back and called him “an excellent chap”, having mistaken him for Gordon Johnson, another tall boy with an affection for camel-coloured clothing, and Mr Dripp had been somewhat preoccupied with Mr Whittle ever since.

“Come on, Horace[7]!” Henry said urgently, swaying slightly as he peered at each of the doors.

Most of them had very neat labels in brass plates. Here, **ACADEMIC RECORDS, UC 1950-2000.** It seemed too banal. There, **VERY VERY PERSONAL FILES, DO NOT ENTER** , seemed too obvious.

Another door, quite plain compared to the rest of the other doors, which were varied in their colours, woods, choice of door handles, and aggressively magical fields, had a brass plate that read **ROOM XB.**

Yes.

That seemed like just the ticket.

The door was unlocked[8], and Henry lunged inside, stumbling and almost dropping his bottle. Dripp followed him inside, glancing around as if someone might be in their pursuit, which was not the case, and indeed, would never be the case. If someone saw Henry and Dripp going in one direction, one inevitably chose the other, even if their destinations were (regrettably) the same.

“Oh,” Henry said.

“It’s a _file room_ ,” Dripp whined, pointedly, and gestured with some droopy expressiveness to the room around them. “What did you expect?”

“Well,” Henry said, rum-infused visions of naked portraiture of the few attractive wizards on the UU campus swimming before his brightly blue eyes. “Something… exciting.” Dripp scoffed, and the sound was followed by a very familiar, wet noise as he dribbled something on the floor. Henry, an unwise man nonetheless wise to _this_ occurrence, did not turn around to look.

Room XB was not exciting.

It was a grey-painted room with a cobwebbed ceiling, and contained several rows of large, steel-grey filing cabinets. Sighing exaggeratedly, Henry took a long swig of his bottle, and he began to walk farther inside. Despite the lateness (or earliness, depending on one’s perspective) of the hour, the candles in the room were lit. Occasionally, an unlucky cobweb would catch at a candle and disappear in a flume of thick dust and dead spiders.

Dripp, somewhat dejectedly (he often moved dejectedly) followed Henry into the room. It might be noted that Mr Dripp was also drunk, but alcohol made him even more predisposed to melancholy than usual, and the night would inevitably end with Mr Dripp soppily pressing his head to Henry’s chest. Henry, who expected this, and indeed expected the resultant wet night shirt to be thrown aside, did not _mind_ this fact precisely, but wanted very much to get his money’s worth in drunken antics before the answering drunken crying on Dripp’s part.

“Oh, _hello!”_ Henry said excitedly, and he rushed into the long room, skidding to a stop in the room’s very centre. The three doubled-up rows of file cabinets, which seemed to span on into the infinity of the grey room, had a gap in their centre, and taking up this gap, with a little space on each side, was a grand piano.

Unlike the rest of the room, which was caked in several layers of dust, some of which was quite sentient and was rolling disapprovingly in the direction of the two interlopers, the piano was very well taken care of. Varnished to a handsome sheen, for it was made of a dark mahogany, the top board was lifted and resting neatly on the prop, baring the strings and hammers within. The keys, too, were on display, their casement lifted, and some sheet music rested comfortably on the stand, as if someone had just been playing in here a moment ago.

Dripp had the inescapable sensation that they were not wanted here.

He was very used to this sensation, as it accompanied him almost everywhere, but in here, it was all but _palpable_. The files seemed to all but vibrate in their grey caskets, and Dripp got the sort of guilt one usually gets when making the decision to take a shortcut through the Small Gods cemetery. It seems _disrespectful_ , to walk through a graveyard for no reason, as if all the dead people are lying in their beds and cursing you for disturbing their sleep, and that was exactly what it felt like, here in Room XB.

“Henry,” he said softly, as if frightened of disturbing some hitherto unknown and likely beasts in the filing cabinets (which was, it so happened, exactly what he was frightened of). “We should go.”

Henry scoffed at him, and he wrenched open one of the cabinets with a _creak_ of noise, dragging at random a file from within. This file, without ceremony, he threw into Dripp’s arms: he then dropped rather heavily into the piano stool, and began, with aplomb, to play the opening chords of _A Wizard’s Staff Has A Nob On The End_.

Despite the impressive level of his inebriation, he played them mostly correctly, but Room XB did not approve, and gave a loud, thunderous growl that twisted Dripp’s spine and made Henry yelp in horror, lurching from the stool and knocking over his rum bottle, which was by now mostly empty.

“Alright,” Henry said when he saw Dripp turn his _Didn’t I tell you?_ look on him, which he was on the receiving end of half a dozen times a day. In quiet moments to himself, Henry often mused that he was actually fond of these glares, despite the precipitatious nature of the face they were attached to. In this moment, which was not at all quiet, and thrummed with an overpowering cacophony that seemed to come up from the floor and bite into his bones, he did not think anything. He grabbed hold of Dripp’s hand, which was expectedly clammy, and he said, “Let’s _go!”_

And they ran.

It was only when they arrived back in the dorms, having run, stumbled, fell, tumbled, and generally unsuccessfully ambulated back, that they realized Dripp still had hold of the file. It was a blank manila folder, and within were about forty pages of indecipherable text.

Dripp decided to deal with this by taking the file out into another corridor, putting it down on the floor beside a trophy cabinet that was ostentatiously empty, and then going back to bed with Henry. Dripp was of the not-inaccurate opinion that if he subtly ensured he was out of the vicinity, other people would clean up his messes[9]. The bonechilling fear of inevitable file-monsters had made him forget to be melancholy, and so he did not cry. Instead, he crawled on top of Henry’s back, as the bigger man was lying on his belly with one arm hanging down off the bed, snoring, crammed his face against Henry’s shoulders, and fell asleep there.

The file rested on the floor until six o’clock in the morning, when the Librarian, who was walking to the kitchen in search of a fortifying bunch of bananas, picked it up, peering at it thoughtfully. “Ook,” he mused, tilting his head. It was not uncommon for files to wander from the file rooms downstairs, and appear in other places.

They would usually wander back eventually.

In the meantime, he decided it would be best to set the file beside his desk in the Library, as there were no clues on the file as to what room it had come from. He would mention it at the staff meeting, in case anyone was missing something, and that would be that.

It was not, regrettably, so simple.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

At the staff meeting of Unseen University that week, mentions and descriptions of the files were met with blank incomprehension, but they did prompt an unrelated topic. Arnold Hoo, Professor of Magical Mixology, had unlucky custody of some of the haunted file rooms, all of which were now disused[10]. These rooms could not be cleared out, but in the event that they were taken care of, they were mostly well-behaved.

The worst of the rooms was Room XB.

This room hosted a great many thousand file cabinets, each of them full to the brim with neatly organised folders, but none of them were readable to most human eyes, and Professor Hoo had read the contents of one file once, and then very hurriedly shoved the file back into the cabinet.

Room XB, when not appeased, could be remarkably violent, and became very charged with thaumic energies in the event it was _not_ appeased… Luckily, the method of appeasement was remarkably easy to procure. Room XB liked music, and when it became restless in the month of March (this being around the time where Professor Abbot had been killed), a few hours of piano per week would keep it calm.

“So, as we enter the month of March, Mr Drumknott is going to come in on Tuesday and Saturday evenings, as usual,” Hoo said, an icepack held against his head. He was very hungover, but only because he had a rule against being drunk for staff meetings[11], and as soon as he left the room, he would be downing the flask of pre-mixed Bon Vivant in his pocket. “Are Tuesday and Sunday alright for everyone?”

Everyone around the table nodded their heads, or stared blankly into space, because this was a staff meeting, and they weren’t going to pay attention until the agenda turned either to food and drink, or monetary requests by individual departments.

“Ah, young _Drumknott_ ,” Ridcully, the University’s Archchancellor said, with a roguish grin, and a meaningful tap against his crossbow, which was sticking out of a specially-made pocket in his hat. “This is the year I’ll make him _blink!”_

Rincewind, Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography and highly reluctant Health and Safety Officer of Unseen University, sighed. Unfortunately, when the Archchancellor had that grin on his face, it was usually a Health and Safety issue. And then he asked, in a very long-suffering tone, “What do you mean by that, Archchancellor?”

“Mr Drumknott is Lord Vetinari’s personal clerk,” said Ponder Stibbons, in a carefully measured tone[12]. “He’s quite unshakeable, and usually if people jump out at him, he doesn’t even _flinch_.”

“So?” Rincewind asked, but already, he was beginning to envisage the problem. The Bursar, who was sitting to the Archchancellor’s left, was currently eating birdseed he had wrestled from a cursing crow[13] in mid-air with a deranged satisfaction. The Bursar, once upon a time, had been quite sane, but Ridcully had become quite interested in his quiet demeanour when he had become Archchancellor, and had proceeded to jump out at the Bursar, wrestle him, and generally shock his sensibilities until his psyche snapped. This had not, as yet, had any effect on his ability to do the Unseen University’s accounts and budgets, but it did make him… mad.

“The Archchancellor has taken this as a personal challenge,” Ponder said quietly.

“It bally well is!” Ridcully said, drumming his fingers on the table. “He enjoys it, anyway! Like foxes!”

“Foxes, Archchancellor?” Ponder repeated.

“They enjoy the _hunt_ ,” Ridcully said. Ponder screwed up his face. “And besides, young Drumknott gets enough of it, what! He’s killed five Assassins this year.”

“I don’t think he has,” Rincewind said doubtfully, thinking of the figure of Drumknott. Rufus Drumknott, who was an exceedingly small man a little shorter than 5’5”, was slim, quiet, and rather red-faced. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles, without which he could not see more than about two feet in front of his face, and kept his brown hair perfectly coiffed and parted with Mr Quiver’s Unscented Unguent.

“Ook,” said the Librarian wisely. The Librarian was quite good friends with Drumknott, who spent his very occasional days off in the Library, reading. He had done this, Rincewind had been informed, since he was a very small boy, and had never been deterred by the Library’s playful attempts to kill him horribly. He was actually eligible as a clerk, according to the Librarian, to take the L-space exams, but had said he would not do so until he was 35. Mr Drumknott was currently 32, although he looked quite a bit younger, to Rincewind.

“Well, no,” Rincewind said. “I think that, probably, the Assassins are being killed by guards in the palace, or by Vetinari. Drumknott doesn’t look like he could kill a houseplant, let alone a trained Assassin.”

The Librarian, who was an orang-utan, gave Rincewind the most serious look his droopy, red-brown eyes could muster, and Rincewind felt a shiver run down his spine at the idea of Rufus Drumknott somehow murdering five highly-trained men. “ _Ook_ ,” he said emphatically.

“Quite right,” Ridcully said cheerfully. The idea of Rufus Drumknott killing people, or indeed, anybody killing anybody if it was professionally mandated, did not deter him at all. He was an old-fashioned sort of man.

“What does he actually _do_ in Room XB?” asked Rincewind, who had been a member of the faculty for many years, but had never actually been on campus during the month of March, and had never seen Mr Drumknott on the campus except to read in the Library, or to appear silently behind the visiting Patrician like a very well-organised ghost to hand him something, or to take notes.

“He plays piano for the files,” Professor Hoo said, who was feeling like his skull was going to crack open any moment. This had happened once before, and while it had made a mess, it had added a spot of pizzazz to the martini he had been making. Perhaps too much, in fact. “They like music, and they like _him_ , too. What with his being a clerk and that. He’s been doing it now for, uh… fifteen years. Thereabouts.”

“Why doesn’t one of the students do it?” asked the papery voice of Professor Hinch, Lecturer in Herbological Solutions. His eyes were visibly unfocused, and his pupils were like dinner plates: Rincewind turned his nose delicately against his sleeve to keep from taking in the smell.

“Er,” Hoo said. “Room XB doesn’t… _like_ the students.”

“Room XB’s very sensible,” Ridcully said approvingly, but Rincewind still didn’t quite _get_ it.

“And Lord Vetinari just— Gives him the evening off, to play music for a file room? That seems very charitable of him.”

“It’s better for everybody if the files are played to,” Hoo said regretfully, staring into space at horrors unknown. “Last time they weren’t played to was ten years back, when Mr Drumknott was laid up with Dragon Flu.”

“That was a wonderful spring,” the Bursar said softly. “So many lights in Sator Square.” He could sound remarkably sane when his dried frog pills were mixed in with his food.

“Yes, they were fires, actually, Bursar,” Hoo said, albeit deferentially. “And they were intent only on burning _people_. Forty-five people were incinerated, and two-hundred-and-six were severely injured. The fires even killed a few _trolls_ , just melted them down to lava. The only other clerk we could found who played piano well enough was some boy from the Historian’s Guild, and he didn’t play the right songs. They buried his ashes in Small Gods, I think.”

Rincewind swallowed.

“Well, Mr Drumknott and Lord Vetinari both came out. Mr Drumknott was _very_ ill – he was feverish with sickness, and he had a flopsweat on him. He actually collapsed as he entered the building, and Lord Vetinari went down to Room XB himself. He was in there for quite a few hours, but he seemed to soothe the files enough.”

Rincewind stared at Hoo, who noticed his face, and flinched, then winced as his face throbbed, and his parched throat repeated an as-yet-unheard request for water or, better, gin.

“I don’t know what he did,” Hoo mumbled. “But I think Room XB knew better than to argue with Lord Vetinari. Anyway, Drumknott slept in one of the beds in the infirmary for a while, and then Vetinari took him home in the coach.”

“Home?” Rincewind repeated.

“Well,” Hoo said. “To the Palace. He lives on-site, I think.”

“Ook,” the Librarian said.

“Yeah, sounds like,” Rincewind said. Drumknott was _mad_ , it seemed to him – it was one thing to be personal clerk to the Patrician and fight off Assassins the whole year, who only had it out for you _because_ you were clerk to the Patrician, but it was another entirely to let a haunted file room get attached to you. Especially a file room that had a tendency to _burn_ people.

“Drumknott had a very stern word with the files, once he was recovered,” Ridcully said approvingly. He was the sort of man that believed stern words, said loudly enough, could fix most problems. “Told them they’d best not do this burning people business again, and voice their frustrations in a more frank and professional manner.”

“That sounds like the sort of thing a clerk would say,” Rincewind said, too used to the general insanity of Ankh-Morpork to argue with the logic. “Did it work?”

“Who knows?” the Archchancellor said cheerfully, with a shrug of his shoulders. “No point worrying about it until something happens, eh?”

Rincewind did not agree, but it didn’t seem worth raising the point, and the meeting moved onto the matter of the budget, which comprised of many people asking for money, and the Bursar serenely saying, “Absolutely not,” to every single one.

Several floors below the Uncommon Room, Room XB _seethed_.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

On the 1st of March, which was a Tuesday, Rufus Drumknott took a neat step into the Oblong Office, carefully drawing his coat onto his shoulders. It was twenty minutes to five o’clock, and it was a walk of precisely sixteen minutes[14] from the Patrician’s Palace to the entrance of Unseen University. At twenty-five minutes to seven, he would depart the University, return to the Patrician’s Palace for dinner in the servant’s quarters, and then return to work with Lord Vetinari until half-past ten-o’clock.

Drumknott liked his work with Vetinari.

The Patrician, in Drumknott’s mind, was one of the most noble men on the Disc: he had devoted his life, quite entirely, to separating the city of Ankh-Morpork into measurable pieces, and with it so divided, he made it work more efficiently. In his time as Patrician, he had even legalised, codified, and carefully taxed the work of the Thieves’ Guild, making the world at large that bit more predictable.

If Ankh-Morpork were rendered in crisp white pages, all of its souls and all its people[15] laid out in black and white text and numbers, all of its geography set in two dimensions on the paper, its very body made into files instead of physicality, then Lord Vetinari would be the ring-binder. He would be the city’s backbone, keeping it in careful order, and equally, he would be its protector[16].

Indeed, in joining Lord Vetinari’s service upon the unfortunate demise of his previous personal clerk, Lupine Wonse, some thirteen years previous, Drumknott had learned a lot about organisation. He had also learned about manipulation, wordplay, cryptography, geography, literature, needlework, poison, fencing, horseback riding[17], economics, politics, sartorial fashions, and, in general, killing people.

Drumknott was not, in the day-to-day, an especially bloodthirsty man. He was not needlessly cruel or unkind to those he spoke to, and he looked very badly upon those who jumped at the chance to hurt others for no reason at all. Like his master, however, Drumknott was equally of the opinion that, at times, acts of violence were quite necessary, and he had become very adept at both inflicting pain and disabusing a body of the notion of life in the course of his daily duties.

For the past while, a bounty had been laid on Mr Drumknott’s head by an individual at the Assassins’ Guild. This bounty had been laid by a Lord Fernley-Wattle, a rather eccentric gentleman who believed it was inappropriate for red-headed men to be clerks as a result of hot blood[18], and who had been spurred on by Lord Vetinari’s polite refusal to let his clerk go for the colour of his hair. This was of course, in part because Drumknott did not actually _have_ red hair, unless one looked at him in the direct sunlight, and noticed that there was a slightly red tint to it. When he was a child, it had had vague ambitions of auburn, but had never followed through.

The price on Mr Drumknott’s head had initially been a very modest forty thousand dollars, but after Mr Drumknott had neatly snapped the neck of an Assassin that had come upon him in his office[19] before she could even tell him who had sent her, this price had risen somewhat. Now, five Assassins with individual contracts and three years later, the commission for Rufus Drumknott stood at two-hundred-thousand dollars.

One might ask why Lord Vetinari, a trained Assassin in his own right, did not kill the Assassins _for_ him, or indeed why the semi-mythical Dark Clerks, who made up Lord Vetinari’s _special_ requirements, didn’t assist. This was because Mr Drumknott, who was very much a believer in independent problem-solving, and was very intent upon his own self-improvement, particularly in the service of Lord Vetinari, had politely asked they not.

“Would you like me to do anything in the city, sir, before I return to the Palace?” Drumknott asked politely as he pulled on his gloves. They had been a gift from Lord Vetinari’s aunt, Madam Roberta Meserole, the past Hogswatch, and were made of a comfortable blue leather. The fact that Lord Vetinari’s aunt had begun sending him gifts at Hogswatch had initially been the source of some embarrassment, but Lady Meserole was very thoughtful, and ordinarily enclosed a _Thank you_ for taking such “good care” of her nephew[20].

Lord Vetinari undoubtedly _knew_ about these gifts, for the parcels arrived with his own, and this year he had set his own gift for Drumknott (a plain black cravat Drumknott was currently wearing) with the one Lady Meserole had sent. Drumknott had bought his lordship a novelty mug emblazoned with the painted slogan _To the world’s Greatest Boss_ , and Lord Vetinari, who rarely received gifts that were not in some way poisonous or venomous, used it every day.

Lord Vetinari, who was standing before his favoured window in the Oblong Office, looking out over the city with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, as was his wont, did not initially respond. This did not deter Drumknott: after thirteen years in his master’s service, he had become comfortable with Lord Vetinari’s thoughtful silences, and Lord Vetinari’s propensity for quiet did not deter him. Indeed, were Drumknott and Vetinari to compete in the act of moving or existing in silent stillness, they would be almost evenly matched, although Vetinari still naturally outshone his secretary by a hair.

“No, Drumknott, I don’t believe so,” Vetinari said eventually. His voice was quiet, and Drumknott knew, despite having a view only of the back of his lordship’s head, what sort of expression he had on his face. To most, it would resemble Lord Vetinari’s usual, neutral mask, but to Drumknott it might be picked out of a sea of other seemingly usual, neutral masks: little clues to his lordship’s pensiveness might be taken from the set of his eyes, the dilation of his pupils, and even the tiniest movements of his thin lips, which were surrounded by a very neatly-kept goatee. Lord Vetinari was often pensive around March – he had become quite irritable with Room XB what with that incident a decade or so back, and usually become quiet[21] and lost in his own thoughts. “You will return at seven-thirty?”

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said as he wound his scarf exactly twice around his neck, so that the two halves of the fabric were precisely parallel to one another against his chest. “I spoke with Professor Hoo, though, and he says if you send a clacks through to the tower at UU in an emergency, he’ll bring the message down to me directly.”

“Meaning he will send a student to bring you the message directly, likely wasting ten minutes in the process as the young man is drunk, stupid, and possibly lost?”

“The most efficiency Unseen University has to offer, sir,” Drumknott confirmed, and he heard Vetinari’s quiet chuckle in answer. Lord Vetinari did not often laugh in front of company, but he ordinarily allowed himself to laugh in front of Drumknott: he had once described Drumknott as acting in the capacity of an additional limb, as his personal clerk, and would permit himself to show emotions he only showed in front of a very select few. Drumknott was quite proud to be considered amongst the number of those Lord Vetinari trusted to such an extent.

“Your young man ought walk with you,” Lord Vetinari said casually, with a vague gesture of one blue-veined hand. “A fine March morning is, I am told, quite ideal for young lovers.”

It was a very kind thing to say, Drumknott thought. Despite being, himself, an ascetic who had been described as “suave, sexy, and presumably heartless” in the – in Drumknott’s opinion – quite _inappropriate_ gossip column in the Ankh-Morpork Enquirer, Lord Vetinari was ordinarily polite and thoughtful in regards to the romantic involvements of his staff, and had once said to Drumknott that he approved of marriage as an institution because it made even the most unscrupulous individuals accountable to another person. Of course, the sort of partners _Drumknott_ had, he could not marry, but the point still rather stood.

Drumknott hesitated a moment, and then said, “I’m afraid Mr Polkiss and I are no longer involved, sir.” Vetinari turned his head, glancing at Drumknott, and one of his dark brows arched in some surprise. Drumknott was aware that Lord Vetinari’s Dark Clerks reported on the comings and goings of the Palace Staff, but as he and Benjamin had only made the decision to part ways early this morning, none of the Dark Clerks had likely had the time to report on the meeting they had no-doubt somehow eavesdropped upon.

“I am sorry to hear that, Mr Drumknott,” Vetinari murmured. Drumknott had been involved with Benjamin Polkiss, a bank teller at the Royal Bank, for some three months, and until this morning, had actually thought it had been going rather well. Going beyond the basic hurdles Drumknott had to leap in order to pursue a romantic partner, such as in his predilection only toward other men (combatted by his inhuman skills of perception, which were kept sharp to the whetstone by his duties under Lord Vetinari), and his natural aversion to bars, clubs, restaurants, pubs, eateries, and anywhere in which anyone might be imbibing alcohol[22] (an aversion he only ever grudgingly overcame if things became quite desperate), there were other hurdles he was less conscious of how to combat. One of these hurdles, previous partners had supplied helpfully, was his personality. The more pressing of them, in Drumknott’s own mind, was that he simply didn’t have the _time_ to be a gallant paramour[23], available at all hours.

Rufus Drumknott allowed for exactly one day off per month, Ankh-Morpork’s own circumstances allowing. In his mind, this bordered excess – after all, the Patrician _never_ took a full day off, even on Hogswatch, and even when he was quite ill, as he had been with Dragon Flu ten years ago, he would work regardless. In the minds of his prospective partners, Drumknott was _insane_ , and his whole being, to quote a clerk at the Guild of Psychologists who he had been involved with for a few months two years ago, and whom Drumknott had yet to completely recover from, “smacked of emotional unavailability”.

“Such is life, sir,” Drumknott said. “Will that be all?”

“Yes, Drumknott.”

Drumknott inclined his head slightly, picked up his briefcase, in which he kept his sheet music, and closed the door neatly behind him, the floorboards in the corridor creaking subtly beneath his feet as he left.

Alone in his office but for the chairman of the Royal Bank, Mr Fusspot[24], who was quietly snoring in his basket, Lord Vetinari mused, not for the first time, in a distant way, that Mr Drumknott was not the sort to fare well in a romantic entanglement. It brought the clerk, Vetinari could see, no small amount of upset, particularly as his lack of success was _not_ for lack of trying.

Mr Drumknott was of the noble opinion that if his master was working, so too should Drumknott. This left the young man[25] in a strange position, because Lord Vetinari was _always_ working. When he had first taken on the position, Lord Vetinari had laid out his working hours from seven thirty (after breakfast in the servants’ quarters) to seven o’clock (the beginning of dinner), with days off every Octeday. Drumknott had made a face. It had taken some interrogation (even at 19, Drumknott had a sense for the propriety that meant he would not disagree directly with Lord Vetinari unless pressed very hard), but Drumknott had eventually said he would prefer to work the hours Lord Vetinari worked, and take the days off _he_ took off. Lord Vetinari had said that he worked in the Oblong Office from six o’clock in the morning until ten-thirty: Drumknott, who rose at precisely five-fifteen every morning, began work at five-forty-five, and worked until ten-thirty.

After some years of pressure, Drumknott relented on the subject of days off, and would now consent to take exactly one day off per month. Slightly more frequently, he would take an afternoon’s reprieve when offered.

Conscientious, efficient, quick-witted, and surprisingly brutal in his own self-defence, having taken extensive education from the Dark Clerks in the subject, Drumknott is rather perfect as a personal clerk. Vetinari has a great deal of respect for his integrity and his inherently dutiful nature, which meshed so well with Vetinari’s own, and it could be said – although, in the event it were said, it ought be said in a very hushed voice at some geographical location far from Vetinari or one of his many informants – that Vetinari was _fond_ of him.

Drumknott had, the second year in his employ[26], gone so far as to purchase for Lord Vetinari a _gift_. Vetinari had not been _accustomed_ to receiving gifts at Hogswatch that did not come with some desperate attempt at currying his favour: these days, he ordinarily received something from the Lady Sybil Ramkin-Vimes[27] (often, some manner of clumsy needlework or knitting, other times, baked goods that alas, ought not be eaten by anyone without the stomach to digest them, such as Samuel Vimes), and something from Bobbi, his aunt (ordinarily, some manner of clothing with an unsuspected capacity for self-defence). Some years, the Lady Margolotta of Überwald, with whom Vetinari has a comfortably truculent relationship, will send him some manner of sarcastic gift.

Drumknott’s gifts, without fail, were far more thoughtful in their nature. In the first year, he had purchased for Vetinari a new set of fleece-lined gloves, and the card had apologised for the presumption, but had mentioned that Drumknott had noticed the way Vetinari’s cane (to which, at the time, he was still leaning on quite heavily, although his injury had improved significantly since) left an imprint on his palm, and that the lining ought soften this imprinting effect somewhat.

It had been…

More than _observant_ , it had been kind.

One would not look at the figure of Drumknott and guess him an especially kind man. Certainly, one might believe him focused on _honour **[28]**, _but not on being _kind_ to others. He was not, at a glance, especially good at acknowledging the feelings of others, and tended to value efficiency and pragmatism over emotion, but with that said, he _did_ notice them. He believed in frank and open communication with others, in the event communication was necessitated, but he was ordinarily as quick as Vetinari to note the sufferings of others, and take quiet steps to eliminate them, where they proved unnecessary. Unfortunately, these little kindnesses were not sufficient for the young men he took up with to look past his _other_ flaws.

Vetinari recalled the March in which Drumknott had been struck down with Dragon Flu as it had made its rounds of the city. The young man had very nearly _died_ , and had nonetheless insisted he needed to go to the Unseen University to play for the files there, despite scarcely being able to stand, let alone sit at a piano and play.

But he had been driven by duty – not just to Lord Vetinari, or to his prior commitments, but by his duty to the city itself, to Ankh-Morpork.

Vetinari smiled, wanly, as he thought on it. He had accompanied Drumknott, listened to him babbling feverishly about what music the files in Room XB liked (waltzes, and some select sonatas by Bluchoven and Mizort respectively), and what sort of music the files did not like (any sort of folk tune or popular song, and _particularly_ , anything played on a brass instrument, against which the files were quite prejudiced), and what was _in_ the files. Except for Drumknott and Professor Hoo, and now, of course, Lord Vetinari, no one knew what was in them.

Vetinari remembered, as he always did in March, when reminded, how he had felt when Drumknott had collapsed on the stair in the Unseen University, wrapped in blankets and shivering nonetheless, but stubbornly continuing about his crucial duty nonetheless. He had not even known, at the time, about the deaths in Sator Square – he had insisted of his own accord that it was crucial he attend to Room XB, because it was a vow he had made, and therefore one he must keep to.

Vetinari had felt the base had dropped out of his stomach, seeing Drumknott crumple like a house of cards to the ground, and he had lifted his clerk clean from the ground, ignoring the stares from Archchancellor Ridcully and a few of his assembled assistants. Leaving Drumknott in the care of the Librarian[29], he had resolved to deal with the matter of Room XB itself. He had been struggling to keep the extent of his worry, which was all the more rage-inducing as a result of how _unexpected_ it was, to himself, and he had been in a state of some pique when he had descended the stairs to the file rooms.

Initially, when he had entered the room, it had thrummed with distaste at meeting a stranger – indeed, Vetinari had known that the day previous, a young pianist from the Historians’ Guild had been entirely immolated.

“Mr Drumknott, your usual carer, is _quite ill_ ,” Vetinari had said, in a stern but quiet voice that seemed to span the entirety of the room which, like many of the rooms in Unseen University, was actually infinite. “He is currently upstairs, and has succumbed to his fever. _I_ will be playing your usual selection of music. Does that meet with your approval, or shall I take my leave, that you might continue this _childish_ tantrum in peace?”

For a few long seconds, his words had lingered on the air, being slowly digested. The tension in the room had slightly dissipated, and Vetinari had been left with the inescapable impression of a child, thus-chided, who relents in their irritability to say that, yes, actually, they _would_ like to sit down and make some poisons together[30].

Vetinari had played for some hours.

Vetinari had been a natural musician as a boy – possessed of perfect pitch and a quiet, but pleasant voice, and having taken education in the piano, the violin, the cello, and the oboe, he would often play for Aunt Bobbi. Music was ordinarily best, he would always maintain, when written down neatly on paper – this was where it was at its most pure – but with the right musician…

Room XB had slowly relented under the sound of his music, and he had felt the files calm themselves around him. He did not cease his playing, however, of every waltz he knew, until he had felt the tension dissipate from the room entirely, leaving it feeling quite ordinary[31].

“Mr Drumknott will return to you when he is recovered,” Vetinari had promised quietly. “And in the meantime, you will _behave_. I would reiterate: his condition is _most_ serious. Do you understand?”

The candles in the room had given meek flares of understanding, and Vetinari had taken his leave.

He remembered the days following quite well, vividly. Drumknott had been quite grievously ill, and Vetinari had had his sickbed moved to the corner of the Oblong Office, that he might keep a more assiduous watch over him as he worked through the fever. Wuffles had curled up tightly beside him, all but burrowing into his breast, and it had filled Vetinari with an indescribable, twisting ache to look down at the young man writhing and sobbing in his insensible delirium…

It had been _painful_ , to see him in such agony, and be able to do naught to soothe him. Vetinari had felt quite ill with it the powerlessness – he had felt something similar, only two or three years after, when Drumknott had been stabbed whilst performing his duties. Vetinari had decided to keep him a good deal closer, after that.

Vetinari’s very life as Patrician had been built, quite carefully, to preclude the idea of romance, or even of some sexual interlude. Married men, after all, must be held _accountable_ to their spouses, and in the event he took up with a man his own age, the city would be in some uproar, he is sure, let alone a young man twenty years his junior, and his own _employee_. The very idea is unthinkable.  

And who had the time for such things?

Not him, certainly. He had even less time to hand that Drumknott to pursue that manner of connection.

And yet where Drumknott was concerned, Vetinari felt… _Something complicated_. Every emotion Vetinari felt was complicated, in the same way that when a tree manages to force its way through hard soil, wrench its way around ruin and broken trellis and rock, and battle every element to survive, _it_ ends up looking quite complicated. Vetinari was not one to foster unnecessary emotion, and the few that managed to survive his punishing routine were deeply felt, and deeply rooted.

Feelings like _these_ , the ones that were tided into a very tidy internal box marked **Drumknott, R.** , always resurfaced around March, and were always _distracting_. It was frustrating, that his concentration might be taken hostage by such musings as his _clerk_ , and yet it was inescapable.

“Mr Fusspot,” Vetinari said, turning from the window, and the dog opened one lazy eye, looking up at him. “Walkies.”

Very reluctantly, being quite an indolent animal at heart, the bank chairman crawled from his bed.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

As Drumknott stood from the piano, he was assailed with a strange sensation of tension in the air. Room XB had been brittle and of poor mood when he had entered, but it had been soothed, little by little, as he had played. This was always the case, and Drumknott found that it was much like convincing a strange cat you were its friend. It might start off as standoffish, yes, but once you scratched its cheeks a few times, and it began to purr, it would soon go boneless and relax in your lap. Drumknott quite liked cats, much more than he did dogs, although he made a comfortable exception for Wuffles, who had died several years previous, and for Mr Fusspot.

The tension now was once more thick in the room, and he paused for a moment, feeling the change in pressure as it shifted against his chest, making it slightly harder to breathe, as when one is much higher in altitude than one is used to.

“What is it?” Drumknott asked quietly, glancing around the room, and a few of the candles flared to his left. Drumknott turned to look in that direction, seeing nothing, and he stepped forward, toward the other stack of filing cabinets… “Oh,” Drumknott muttered disapprovingly, and he knelt down to take up the almost-empty bottle of rum. “ _Students_ ,” he muttered.

The candles flared in scornful agreement, and Drumknott took up the bottle’s cap, twisting it into place. None of the rum had spilled upon the floor, at least, and he shook his head.

“I will return on Saturday evening, at the same time,” Drumknott said, and suddenly, the tension bloomed so much as to almost bowl him over, and he gasped in pain at the sudden pressure, grasping tightly at a nearby cabinet to keep himself from falling over. “ _Now_ ,” he snapped, giving the room at large a very cold look that would rival the Patrician’s for ice. “We’ve discussed this before! You needn’t be so _physical_. I will return on _Saturday_ , and I shall play some more then. I do have other responsibilities, you know.”

The room’s candles flickered sulkily, and Drumknott sighed, taking a few steps toward the door.

When he had left, one of the filing cabinets in the room, which was slightly lighter than usual, creaked meaningfully, and the room let out a collective, draughty noise that was almost like a sigh.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott rolled over in bed, and he pressed his face against the glorious warmth of his partner’s body. He was _always_ warm, always – the hands and feet possessed excellent circulation, and he was like a furnace in bed, the dog snoring quietly at their feet. Drumknott’s nose nuzzled against an unresisting, but hard-toned chest, and he relaxed as he felt the familiar arm curl around his shoulder.

He was as yet still almost asleep, comfortably existing beneath the fog of Morpheus’ embrace, although he was aware it was almost five o’clock, and that he would feel naturally inclined to rise in the next few minutes.

The hand rubbed gently down his shoulder. “We ought get up,” his partner murmured, his voice a low rumble against Drumknott’s forehead.

“Five more minutes,” Drumknott mumbled.

“You don’t want to shower, hm?” the voice asked, punctuating the question with an affectionate kiss to the top of his forehead. Drumknott sighed in pleasure, although the question, frankly, beggared understanding.

“Shower what?” he replied.

It was at this point that he remembered, all at once, that he had never slept in bed with another person. He had _lain_ with other men, that much was true, but he had always returned home to the Patrician’s Palace instead of sleeping there, in case it made him late for work the following morning. He had _never_ slept with a partner, never woken up with a partner _beside_ him…

This happens, sometimes, when one is having one of those dreams that sneakily creeps from one’s mind into half-wakefulness: one does not realize the facts until one _does_ , and then it is all at once, with the horrible, abrupt sensation that the rug is being ripped out from beneath you.

Drumknott opened his eyes, jolting on his hard mattress, and he stared at the empty space beside him in the bed. He had been so _sure_ , it had felt so _real_ , to have his head on that breast, to be so comfortably…

Drumknott sat up, feeling strangely disoriented, and he rubbed hard at his eye, giving a yawn. Morpheus… “Morpheus,” he said aloud, hoping it might ring some bell of understanding, but it did not. He’d been a _god_ , Drumknott had thought, one of those ones mentioned in literature, but he doesn’t recall now what dream-logic had accompanied this unfamiliar name.

Sighing, he rose from bed to perform his morning ablutions, and go about the day’s work.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“My lord?” Drumknott asked after they had done the morning crossword, and Vetinari turned to look at him as he sipped at his tea. Drumknott always made his tea for Lord Vetinari the way that he took it himself: without milk or sugar, and with a pinch of ginger. It was bracing, and somewhat bitter, and Vetinari liked it immensely. Owing to a mother who had practised a similar art, Drumknott knew a great deal of herbalism, and believed the right tea at the right time could ease, if not cure, all manner of malady. “I wondered if I might ask you a question on some matter of ephemera?”

“Oh?” Vetinari asked, arching an eyebrow. “It is rare, Drumknott, that you ask me questions on _trivia_. Likely to be a crossword clue, perhaps?”

“Perhaps, sir,” Drumknott said. He had a rather pinched, preoccupied expression, and Vetinari wondered vaguely if this was about his young man, Polkiss. Drumknott had seemed disappointed, but not expressly so – he was well-accustomed by now, after all, to the resultant break-up of his unsuccessful relationships, and much like Vetinari, did not make much outward show of his feelings. “Do you know what Morpheus is the god of, sir?”

“Morpheus,” Vetinari repeated. The name conjured no particular mental image, and he felt his head tilt ever so slightly to the side. He thinks for a moment, rifling through his carefully cultivated banks of internal knowledge, but no god makes himself known. “I fear your knowledge is ahead of mine, Drumknott. What _is_ he a god of?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Drumknott confessed, still retaining the pinched expression. “The name passed through my thoughts in a dream, but…” He trailed off, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. Drumknott’s dreams were a source of some vague interest for Vetinari. He did not dream, himself, as most people did.

Drumknott’s dreams were ordinarily very vivid things, either casually abstract in a way he only noticed upon waking (on one occasion, Vetinari recalled him idly saying he had been doing the filing for Death, who had been in great need of a clerk after a crisis in his home dimension[32]), or vibrantly absurd in the process (such as the time he had dreamed Vetinari required for him to go undercover as a flamenco dancer). Vetinari’s own dreams, scant as they might be called such a thing, were rare and fleeting. They consisted of scattered feelings, sensations: occasionally, he felt a falling sensation or a sense of soaring through the air; he would hear snatches of music as if from the next room in the pitch black; he would smell lavender, or the _almost_ undetectable scent of Mr Quiver’s Unscented Unguent.

Of course, Vetinari slept for only two hours a night, and _three_ , when he relaxed on Hogswatch. He supposed his psyche did not often have the time for dreams.

“Curious, Drumknott,” Vetinari mused. “Perhaps nothing but a nonsense conjured up in the realms of unconsciousness.”

“Undoubtedly, sir,” Drumknott said dutifully, with a nod of his head. “Shall we proceed with your morning correspondence?”

“Please,” Vetinari said, with a gesture of one hand. Drumknott sat down in the chair across from his desk to do so, and Mr Fusspot leapt with his usual alacrity into Drumknott’s lap. For a moment, Drumknott was quiet, looking down at the dog with his eyebrows raised, and Mr Fusspot, apparently uncaring of Drumknott’s sardonic expectation, leaned his body against against Drumknott’s belly, and allowed his tongue to loll from his mouth.

“I prefer cats,” Drumknott told the dog, very sternly.

Mr Fusspot whined in silent question, and Drumknott smiled just slightly, patting the dog’s head, before looking to the letter from the Genuan ambassador. For a moment, Vetinari felt a twinge of warmth in his chest, seeing the way Drumknott relaxed as he returned to his work, and the bank chairman curled up on his thighs, falling asleep there. The dog looked _adorable_ , and Drumknott himself, his shoulders square, absently scratching the animal’s ears as he read from the letter…

That, too, was—

Vetinari was _fond_ of Drumknott. Inescapably so.

 **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“+++ Thaumic energies surging in dream state. +++”

 Ponder frowned, glancing at Hex, and his fingers moved quickly across the keyboard. “ _What do you mean?”_

“+++ Thaumic energies surging in dream state. +++”

Ponder sighed, and then typed, “ _Please elaborate. Whose dream state?”_

“+++ Dream state clerk favourite. Further communication tricky without mouth or fingers.+++”

Ponder frowned. _“What should I do?”_

“+++ Unknown. Flamingo library piano clerk dog kiss fever dream piano file. File. File.+++”

Every time, Ponder mused, he thought Hex was getting better – and Hex _was_ getting better, he was sure. It was just that Hex was improving as a machine, and not necessarily improving at communicating on a more personal level.

 _“Please advise when possible,”_ Ponder typed, and he stood up to work on something else for a while.

 

[1] A word, curiously, that can mean both “impressively great” and, equally, “unnatural or abnormal”, and is thus extremely fitting.

[2] “Crawling” in the metaphorical sense, but equally, due to the general love of libations by any student population, literally.

[3] A broom cupboard, actually.

[4] More darkness. Complete darkness, actually. It doesn’t end.

[5] But then, it _is_ a university. Some random, unexpected deaths are to be expected.

[6] The fact that neither Henry Whittle, nor any other wizard he had ever spoken to, had posed for a naked iconograph in his life did not see to deter him in believing this rumour held water. Nor indeed did the fact that the iconograph was a comparatively recent invention in contrast to the centuries-old university.

[7] Henry Whittle, it might be noted, was the only person Dripp knew who called him “Horace,” and not “Dripp”. This included his own mother and sisters.

[8] Very few rooms were locked at Unseen University, unless they wanted to be locked, which sometimes they did. In this case, their keys would go missing, or would have ceased to have existed twenty years ago.

[9] Metaphorical messes. He had learned many spells to deal with his _literal_ messes, which no one else would come close to.

[10] He had actually inherited this custody from Professor Jericus Abbot, Hoo’s predecessor, some 42 years ago. Abbot was killed by a rabid trombone in the Applied Musicology department, being a trombonist himself, meaning that the trombone (wild trombones being territorial by nature) had taken offence to his scent. Professor Ritornello eventually took to breeding trumpets instead.

[11] This was because every other attendant of the meeting would usually be drunk, and Hoo felt someone ought be sober.

[12] Ponder Stibbons liked to carefully measure almost everything.

[13] Many animals on the Unseen University campus were capable of speech, as a result of thaumic effects on their physiologies and natural intelligences, but the crows mostly used their magical erudition to insult the students and faculty. They had a feud with the Bursar, and would call him and anyone else nasty names whenever he flew past.

[14] Like Ponder Stibbons, Rufus Drumknott believed in measuring everything carefully. Unlike Ponder Stibbons, who did these things in the hopes of higher understanding, Drumknott did this because he liked that things could be measured, as he felt that this made them respectable. This was why Drumknott, for the most part, did not like other people, who could be difficult to get the measure of.

[15] Lord Vetinari considered these categories to be distinctly separate, and so did Drumknott.

[16] Mr Drumknott, who was not prone to poetic descriptions of the world around him, inevitably referred to stationery when he chose to attempt one.

[17] In theory _only_ , as he had refused to mount a horse even in the wild plains of Genua. This had made Vetinari laugh, but he had not pressed the issue.

[18] In Fernley-Wattle’s defence, as a young man, Drumknott had had an exceedingly explosive temper, but the discovery of filing as a system of anger management had served to cool his hot blood considerably.

[19] He had been holding a dagger-like letter opener at the time, but had dropped it in favour of avoiding the mess any blood would make of the carpet. Some years before, the carpet in Lord Vetinari’s office had been ruined by Drumknott being stabbed himself, and it had made him quite sensitive to the difficulty of getting bloodstains out of carpets and rugs.

[20] Drumknott, who was rarely noticed by anyone he chose not to be noticed by, had been very pleased with this assessment of his hard work.

[21] Even more so than usual.

[22] Owing to a violent and alcoholic father, and being a somewhat angry drunk himself, Drumknott was almost a tee-totaller. The only exception to this complete absence of alcohol was on Hogswatch eve, where after their day’s duties, which were ordinarily quite uneventful, he and Lord Vetinari would each drink a tot of brandy together before bidding one another goodnight, and a happy new year.

[23] He didn’t especially have _any_ of the qualities in a gallant paramour, unless one’s expectations of a gallant paramour were very specific.

[24] Mr Fusspot, it should be noted by the uninitiated reader, was a very small lapdog with extremely protuberant eyes and a love of long walks in the kitchens.

[25] Despite being 32 years old, Drumknott eternally came off as someone younger than he was.

[26] Vetinari had hired him at the very end of Sektober, and they had known one another only for two months at Hogswatch in the first year of Drumknott working for him.

[27] Lord Vetinari and the Lady Sybil take tea together once a month or so, and Lord Vetinari quite enjoys it.

[28] Drumknott’s own version of honour was quite concerned with filing and stationery, but the point still stood.

[29] The Librarian was one of the few wizards Vetinari considered to be trustworthy and sensible, and had taken care of him and his dog, Wuffles, when he had been turned into a lizard some years before.

[30] Havelock Vetinari had had an unorthodox childhood.

[31] Except for the fact that it spanned on for forever, and that its filing cabinets were full to the brim with Eldritch writings that made the eyes ache if one looked at their pages for too long, but Lord Vetinari was not one to be bothered with petty concerns like these.

[32] Death had been quite grateful, actually. He had left a kitten in the path of Mildred, one of the kitchen maids, so that she brought the animal into the Palace, and although he had had to have strict words with him about catching rats (the Patrician employs these rats as spies, and they are not to be killed or trapped), he was now a very pampered moggy who ate a lot of food scraps in the kitchen. Drumknott often read with the animal in his lap after dinner.


	2. Chapter 2

In the coming days, Drumknott’s dreams were exceedingly pleasant. Every night, he dreamt of sleeping in the arms of another man, feeling his warm heat beside him on the stiff mattress, feeling his hands in Drumknott’s hair. Every morning, he woke up well-rested and comfortable, but slightly disoriented, as if everything about him was subtly out of place. Of course, nothing was out of place.

Drumknott did not, and had never, allow for that sort of thing. He was the sort of man who believed that everything had its rightful place, and that lists of these things and places should be catalogued in alphabetical order and filed in a sensible cabinet, which was precisely what he did.

Despite the strangeness of the disorientation, though, he allowed himself to enjoy the dreams. It was very rare, that his dreams should be so _comfortable_ in their strangeness, so sweetly domestic, and he enjoyed how well-rested he was feeling in the aftermath of waking up. This, he mused, was an acceptable trade-off: the pleasantry of a vivid dream that ultimately made him more efficient as the day went on, as a result of his entirely replenished energy, was an easy exchange for but a few seconds of oddity.

After his confusion passed, he was _palpably_ improved by his night’s repose each morning, and he felt himself of high mood, despite the unfortunate parting of ways with Mr Polkiss[1]. His prospects at love, he mused, in a distant way, were quite doomed. Unless he elected to leave the Patrician’s service, or to take up with another of his staff…

Both equally _unlikable_ prospects.

There were handsome Dark Clerks, to be certain – he looked favourably upon Halton Juniper, for example, who was the competent second to Mr Lockheed[2] – but he felt he would be distracted from his duties, were he to pursue such a thing.

The Patrician came first, after all, always.

The Patrician came first: _Ankh-Morpork_ came first. This was his duty. Duty was – alongside well-kept files and sensible shoes – what made the world function in the way it ought.

On Saturday, Room XB was more well-behaved, and Drumknott played for the room’s pleasure a selection of arias from Bloodaxe and Ironhammer, the popular dwarven opera, between the expected waltzes. He rather looked forward to March every year – as a boy, he had learned to play the piano in the Horse and Coaches[3], a pub across the road from his childhood home in Dimwell, under his mother’s tutelage. He had never learned to read music, however, until he had joined the Patrician’s service, and had been advised to learn to read music in order to solve some staff-based cryptograms.

He liked it, though. He liked the freedom that was allowed in the music – playing by ear, he could only play new things once he’d _heard_ them, but like this, why, he could hear music from anywhere, play it himself. It was exciting in the same way receiving a complicated piece of office equipment, like a new stapler, was exciting: there was a process of assembly, an excitement to be held in figuring out for oneself that was instructed on paper. Drumknott did not allow himself many pleasures.

He played at the piano in the Blue Room, a sound-proofed drawing room containing a pianoforte in the Patrician’s palace, for an hour or so a week. Ordinarily, this would be alone, before he retired to bed, although sometimes, Lord Vetinari would accompany him to the Blue Room after they walked Wuffles in the afternoon, and Drumknott would play as Vetinari worked through some paperwork at the desk there. He had a subscription to a stationery magazine that arrived every month, and which he would read in the free hours he had before bed. He would sometimes design new ringbinders or mechanical designs for office equipment, and he found this very relaxing.

Drumknott did not care for rich food, or sweet teas or coffees. Food, in Drumknott’s mind, was fuel for the body, and ought be taken according to the measurement of energy one’s body required for one thing or another, and to keep one’s functions regular and keen. Owing to a mother with a passion for herbalism, and a great aunt who was a very accomplished witch in Octarine Grass Country, he considered tea leaves to be a sort of medicine, and looked down on those who chose to ruin the healthful effects of various teas with milk or, horror of horrors, sugar. He did not touch coffee, as it made him overtly exuberant[4]. The only foodstuff in which he would truly _indulge_ , that gave him no health benefit at all except in that it put him in a good mood, was a _root beer float_ , which were served at the Dim Café, an airy establishment on the corner of Whistler Street and Whettle Road.

He had last indulged in a root beer float many years ago, when he had been stabbed in the course of an unfortunate drama in the Oblong Office. He did not, after all, _need_ too many pleasures to keep him going.

Drumknott took joys in the simple things in life: good, crisp paper; hard mattresses and sensibly folded sheets; the quiet conversations he shared with Lord Vetinari, where they discussed the pressing matters of the day. And in this moment, with another duty to perform, he enjoyed that too: he allowed his fingers to pass over the white keys over the piano and he relaxed on the stool, pouring himself into the music.

He left Room XB in a contented mood, and bid the files a warm farewell, until Tuesday.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Lord Vetinari took a delicate sip of his tea, which was slightly watery for his tastes, although Sybil bought a charming variety of fragrant leaf tea which, Drumknott had informed him on one occasion previous, was very favourable for one’s circulation. He was watching, with mild interest, the state of the bank chairman, Mr Fusspot, and his rival of the day, one Mabelline Godfrey Heavens the Second[5].

Mabelline Godfrey Heavens the Second, a very elderly swamp dragon with yellow-brown scales and wide, crusty eyes, was staring down Mr Fusspot, who was a somewhat elderly spoon hound[6]-miniature bandoner[7] cross. The two were both aware, on some instinctive level, that _their_ species was the natural predator of the other.

This instinct rather fell down as it realized they were quite similar in size. It was further hampered by the fact that Mr Fusspot’s teeth, while rather good for a dog his age, could not pierce the hard, leathery skin of Mabelline, and that Mabelline herself was nearly toothless, and could only dribble small amounts of mildly acidic saliva. The two animals sufficed by circling one another, growling quietly, until, inevitably, one of them succumbed to exhaustion, and dropped onto the floor.

This time, it was Mabelline who dropped first, blathering out a grumbled noise, her nostrils smoking slightly. Mr Fusspot clambered on top of her, and went to sleep.

“Every time,” Vetinari mused quietly, with a slight, indulgent smile on his face. This was a smile he reserved almost exclusively for the dog, but in moments like these, it was quite well-earned. Wuffles had never liked the dragons, and had ordinarily kept his distance from them, clambering into Vetinari’s lap (in which case, jealous of this interloper, a dragon would inevitably clamber into Sybil’s), or curling up beneath his chair. Mr Fusspot was a much lazier animal, and found abject avoidance to be too much effort.

“Ridiculous, soppy things,” Sybil scoffed, shaking her head, but she was smiling too, and Vetinari set his cup of tea neatly upon its saucer. She liked their teas together – Havelock Vetinari was a good deal more pleasant than a lot of those she took tea with, and for that matter, he was actually _funny_.

And Vetinari, for this part, enjoyed these tea-times with Sybil. The setting was new, of course – sitting out here in the conservatory, surrounded by the pleasant ozone smell of flowers and plants growing under the concentrated light from the glass roofs, this was the domain of a married woman, settling into some of what was expected of her. Once upon a time, meeting Sybil for tea had comprised of sitting on a wall or a ledge and watching Sybil work as they spoke… He liked both settings in their own right. He didn’t mind that things changed: such was the nature of Ankh-Morpork.

They met up for tea approximately once per month, and had since Vetinari was approaching twenty-five years old, and had returned from the Grand Sneer, taking up some work as an Assassin within the city bounds. He had inhumed an unfortunate on behalf of a Lady Caltrop at the Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons, and had made the Lady Sybil’s official acquaintance there, having met her in passing when they had both been young nobles in Ankh-Morpork’s social scene, neither especially enjoying it.

Even then, Sybil had been a girl of astoundingly overpowering personality (and physical strength), and Vetinari dimly recalled one or two dances wherein she’d clasped his hands in her own, and quite _refused_ to let him lead.

He smiled at the memory: it was an imperceptible upturning of his lip at one edge, and he drew no undue attention to it.

“How is Rufus?” Sybil asked. She always did. She always asked after “Rufus” before she asked after Aunt Bobbi, which was most certainly a _conscious_ implication on Sybil’s part, but Vetinari was, as-ever, loath to lend weight to her implications by acknowledging them. “Mabelline will be sorry for the loss of him this month.”

And this was, indeed, true. Mabelline quite liked Rufus’ lap, and she quite liked to see her there, as Rufus ordinarily relaxed, and smiled. He had a very good way with dragons, despite his fastidiousness: he could be very stern with them if needs be, and ordinarily he was soft with them, which they rather liked. She liked Rufus in _general_ , and privately thought (privately meaning that she did not voice it to anyone except Sam, who she voiced it to frequently) that it wouldn’t be all that dashed bad if she just picked up with someone else, cough cough and all that, in the Palace.

Sam did not like it when she did this, and always pretended not to know what “cough cough” meant.

“Do you think?” Vetinari asked, glancing at the dragon in question. In the absence of Mr Drumknott’s lap, Mr Fusspot seemed to be serving as an adequate blanket: Mabelline seemed to have settled in for her sleep, and the two of them were both snoring quietly. “He is very well, I believe,” Vetinari continued mildly. “He enjoys this time of year when it rolls around, and he really ought get the fresh air.”

“And his young man?” Sybil asked, with a calculatedly bland tone to her voice. She often used this tone with Havelock: she felt it politic enough to appeal to his strange sensibilities, but innocent enough that she could not be accused of being political herself. Of course, no one would ever accuse her of that.

Sitting straight-backed in his chair, Vetinari gave a slight shake of his head, and he watched Sybil sigh quietly, leaning back in her own chair. It gave a warning creak, which she ignored. Sybil, Vetinari mused, was a good woman. She was a good woman in that she cared for other people, quite without compunction: she felt it was her duty to be good and to be kind to those she met, and he respected that.

This was, he supposed, why they were… _friends_.

She would call them friends. Vetinari wouldn’t presume to call them anything in particular[8].

“And how is your aunt?” she asked, and Vetinari glanced toward Mabelline and Mr Fusspot. Bobbi was seventy-six, now, and she had felt the last winter, he is fairly certain, quite keenly. She never gave any indication that her health was failing her, but he was aware, in the distant way he was aware of everything, that it would soon come.

“She is well,” he said, watching as the little dog scoffed an ugly noise in his sleep, burrowing more tightly against the dragon’s neck to make use of her warmth. “She sent Drumknott a pair of gloves this Hogswatch, and I don’t believe I’ve seen him go outside without them since.”

“That’s very sweet,” Sybil said. “Very sentimental, your aunt.”

It was quite pointed, and Vetinari turned to meet Sybil’s gaze. Her red-dappled, scorched face was shifted into a wry smile, and although she had no hair to speak of over her eyes, owing to a lifetime of rearing animals that did not care if their jetstreams of flame hit you in the face, her actual brows were furrowed.

“ _Indeed_ ,” he said darkly, and she laughed.

His lip twitched.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It was raining outside, and Rufus glanced up at the vaulted ceiling of the main reception, at the way the rain lashed down hard against the glass, collecting in the guttering and coming in great torrents down the side of the building. He was dimly aware, with an unfortunate and needling certainty, that the guttering was likely to need replacing by the end of the year, because it was already beginning to come away, and unfortunate patrons walking too close to the building would sometimes be buffeted by a sudden downpour when it wasn’t even _raining_ , but when a broken piece of the drain pipe shifted in the wind.

Sighing, he took up a few of the books from the reshelving pile, taking up six or seven of the large print thrillers to take over to their section and beginning to put them back into their places.

At least it wasn’t snowing.

God knew he couldn’t abide the snow.

Turning his head, he saw Havelock descending the stairs, loosely holding his tablet computer in his hand and leaning on his cane to come down, and he smiled absently, before the realisation struck him like a lightning strike that this wasn’t _right_. He blinked, and he stared down at the last book in his hand: _A is for Alibi_. Acting on dream-prompted instinct, he looked under **G** for Grafton, and neatly slotted the book with its clones on the shelf, beside _B is for Burglar_.

“I’ve decided to murder Sam Vimes,” Vetinari said casually, moving to stand beside him, and Drumknott, for a long moment, stared at him. He was dressed… _oddly_.

Ordinarily, Lord Vetinari wore a dusty cassock that came all the way down to his ankles, with a black skullcap pinned into his hair. Drumknott knew he wore a waistcoat and trousers underneath, but he always wore the robe in company, and it hid a lot of his figure, which was a good deal more muscular than he liked people to know. Vetinari was not, right now, wearing a cassock. Nor, indeed, was the clothing dusty. No, in this moment, Vetinari sported some black trousers that hugged very tightly to this thighs, only flaring at the hem to allow for his boots; he wore a wine-coloured, knitted jumper that came up his neck; and over the top of his light jumper, he wore a suit blazer. On the lapel, there was a _badge **[9]**, _and the badge read **CHIEF LIBRARIAN** , reading **Havelock Vetinari** underneath. Both the suit blazer and the jumper were rolled up to the elbow, and Drumknott felt his gaze linger on Lord Vetinari’s forearms, which were marked over with scars here and there. Drumknott felt a lot could be communicated by someone’s hands and forearms. Not in the course of gesturing[10], but merely in the way those hands were held, what scars and marks might be witnessed upon them, the shape of the fingers… He had never seen Lord Vetinari’s forearms before, but in the dream, they were quite handsome. Pale, but… _strong_.

“Oh,” Drumknott said, realising he ought say _something_. It seemed wrong, even for a dream Vetinari to say – he never used the word _murder_. He would say _inhume **[11]**_. “Why?”

Vetinari sighed, gesturing absently with the black-shining pad in his hand. It was a tablet, Drumknott’s mind supplied, and yet it served no pharmacological virtue that he could surmise. “The mayor has given him _words_ , apparently, as to the appearance of diversity. Therefore, he should like for you or I, preferably both of us together, to speak at the opening of that community centre on Treacle Street.”

“Diversity,” Drumknott repeated, uncomprehending. “What does he want _us_ to do, juggle?”

Vetinari scoffed derisively, with a roll of his icy blue eyes, and he moved back toward the reception of the library. Drumknott followed him, a few steps behind, and he watched as Vetinari leaned over the machine on the desk, his blue-veined fingers moving rapidly over its keys, each of which were printed with a letter of the alphabet.

“Esmerelda is visiting in a week, by the way,” he added, in a dry voice, and Drumknott wondered if the dream Drumknott was meant to know who Esmerelda was. This all seemed very _slow-moving_ for a dream[12], and he didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on. Above him, the rain pounded against the ceiling, and he wondered if perhaps the ceiling would break, and kill him. He dreamed about dying fairly often – those dreams, of course, were something of an exercise in the expected reality. He was rather comforted by the idea of death. Unlike Lord Vetinari, who had professed before he hoped death was naught but a sensation of nothingness, he rather liked the idea of an afterlife comprising of paperwork and companionable silence in the office with his lordship. He sometimes felt quite guilty for these absent-minded thoughts of his afterlife, as he knew they would meet ill with Lord Vetinari’s approval.

“That’s good,” Drumknott said, and Vetinari glanced up from the bright light of the machine, arching a sardonic brow.

“Is it? Is it _good_?” he asked, with no small amount of dramatic flair. He liked to be dramatic, at times, although not usually to this extent. “The _wicked witch_ of Kings Longley disgracing our hallowed halls?” Drumknott frowned. It was not like Lord Vetinari to display such open prejudice in his language, and Drumknott had never heard him speak ill of witches before.

“Witches are very respectable,” Drumknott said, with mild reproach. “My great aunt was a witch, and she was a very good one too, I’m told.”

Vetinari gave him a perplexed look, and it unsettled Drumknott to see his face so… _expressive_. “Your father’s sister, or your mother’s?” he asked, leaning back and crossing his bared arms over his chest. He had quite handsome elbows, Drumknott couldn’t help but notice. Sharp, and well-defined.

“My mother’s sister, Ruth,” Drumknott said. It was not like Vetinari to forget a detail, and Drumknott felt unsettled and on-edge, hoping that the dream would give way to customary abstraction soon. “You know that.”

Vetinari’s head tilted slightly to the side, his brow furrowing slightly. Drumknott noticed he wore two rings on his hand: one of them was the black signet ring he was accustomed to seeing, and the other was a neatly polished, plain silver band. What did _that_ mean? “You’ve never told me that before,” he said quietly, with such assurance that Drumknott wavered for a moment, but he _had_ , he remembers. They’d been talking about Drumknott’s cousins, who are scattered all across the Sto Plains…

“With all due respect due, sir, I most certainly have,” Drumknott replied quietly.

Vetinari’s puzzled expression shifted into one that Drumknott had not seen before, even as a little clue on his face. His lip curled up on one side, his eyes narrowing slightly, and his smirk as he approached Drumknott, moving with serpentine, silent grace over the carpet, could only be described as _roguish_.

“ _Sir_ , is it?” he asked softly, sounding strangely delighted.

“Is there something wrong with that?” Drumknott asked, but a shiver ran up his spine, and he felt himself swallow as Vetinari advanced.

“Oh, no, not at _all_ ,” Vetinari purred, coming in close enough to Drumknott’s space that Drumknott was forced to look _up_ at his face. He could feel Vetinari’s breath against his mouth, and feel the warmth radiating from the Patrician’s body: Vetinari was a good deal taller than him, and in this moment, he was made _well_ aware of the fact. “I am _quite_ in favour of you calling me sir, as I’m sure you know. Nonetheless—”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott shifted in his bed, his head spinning, and he rubbed hard at his eyes.

That was—

 _Strange_.

Grunting, he got to his feet, and his gaze flitted to his watch on the sidetable. The time showed seven minutes past five, and he frowned, feeling his brow furrow. He didn’t… He didn’t wake up _late_. He didn’t wake up early. It was not the sort of thing Rufus Drumknott _did_.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Would you like an analgesic for your headache, sir?” Drumknott asked quietly as he took up the signed pay chitties from Pseudopolis Yard, and Vetinari mused on the question for a moment. Drumknott always _knew_ when Vetinari had a headache. They were not infrequent, and occasionally worked themselves up to the state of full migraine, wherein he would have to lie down on the chaise long to the edge of his office, a wet cloth over his eyes and the blind pulled closed, but in the meantime, the headache was mild, a mere throb that was making itself known at the left side of his head.

Drumknott always knew. He noticed, Vetinari supposed, small quirks in Vetinari’s body language – when he held himself that slightest bit more stiffly than usual, where his gaze was slightly averted from the light from the window or the candle, where his eyes travelled marginally slower over the text on the page in front of him. Most people would not notice these things, as they were not things one noticed. In any case, few people liked to look at the Patrician too carefully. Looking at him carefully always gave one the inescapable impression that somehow, he was looking back, even if his eyes were closed and he was wearing a blindfold over his face. Drumknott was a very perceptive young man, and where perceiving Vetinari was concerned, he was unmatchable.

When he had first joined Vetinari’s service, Vetinari had selected him from the crop of young men at the Guild of Clerks and Secretaries that were currently in-between positions, and were taking irregular work performing small audits and assistances to various guilds and businesses about the city. He had noticed Drumknott some time before, and when Wonse had, ahem, so _tragically_ died…

Drumknott had come to the position with no apparent ambition. Now, some dozen years later, he still has no ambition. Vetinari had offered, once, after that business with Messrs Pin and Tulip, to promote him elsewhere, give him an administrative position overseeing other clerks. Drumknott had turned to regard him for a moment.

The wound on his head was no longer bandaged, but the mark still showed beneath his hair, although these days, he neatly combed his hair that the scar was scarcely noticeable on the side of his right temple. His arm had been in a sling, and performing his duties one-handed had seemed to give him no trouble at all.

“It occurs, sir,” he had said at length, his gaze focused directly on Lord Vetinari’s face[13], “that a promotion is, traditionally, an _advancement_ of one’s position.”

“Quite, Drumknott.”

Drumknott had given a cough that _bordered_ on derisive. He did not bother to respond to Vetinari’s question. He had merely asked if Vetinari wished for any more tea.

Drumknott, in this moment, seemed… _Off_.

Even with his headache distracting him, Vetinari could see Drumknott was quietly distracted, his gaze slightly defocused even as he tided up some files on Vetinari’s desk.

“No, thank you, Drumknott,” Vetinari said quietly. “I expect our walk with Mr Fusspot will serve to fortify me against the pain.”

Drumknott gave a polite nod of his head, and Vetinari asked, “Did you sleep well last night? You seem tired.” He had seen Drumknott _truly_ tired before. Now, he was merely flagging slightly, although before, upon occasions wherein they had been forced to stay up through the night… His composure would fail him somewhat, and he would become almost irritable, reacting poorly to any complicated wordplay. Sometimes, he would swallow a yawn, and reach up beneath the lenses of his spectacles to rub at one of his eyes. It was… Hm. Something.

“I’m merely having odd dreams as of late, Lord Vetinari,” Drumknott said quietly.

Vetinari took a moment, taking in Drumknott’s body language. His boots were turned slightly away from Vetinari, and he was focusing most concentratedly on the files. Ordinarily, Drumknott’s dreams were a subject of comfortable conversation: they mused at times on the oddity of them, shared an occasional chuckle over the strangeness of the somnolent mind.

Drumknott’s body language plainly spoke, however, to a desire to remain _unquestioned_. He was not one, Vetinari mused, that tended to be unsettled by his dreams – even when he experienced dreadful nightmares[14], he awoke comforted by the logic of the reality.

“Unsettling dreams, I take it?” Vetinari asked.

“Merely confusing,” Drumknott said.

“Let us hope they soon come to an end.”

“Indeed, sir,” Drumknott said, with a slight nod of his head. “Will that be all?”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Rufus’ shoulders _ached_.

He had been hunched over this damned machine for nearly thirty minutes, and that aside, he’d lifted a box and shifted the weight wrong in his arms earlier, and the old wound in his right shoulder, where he’d been stabbed ten years ago, was tender. God, _ten years ago_. That seemed mad to him, now, that so much time could have passed.

He remembered, distantly, what it was like with Havelock, before that night. It had been… It had been _pleasant_ , taking up with this handsome, older man and his easy charms, who had initially been so _reluctant_ to allow him closer. He’d thought at the time it was just the age difference, and they’d been together three years before the incident with—

His mind supplied _Pin and Tulip_ , but that didn’t sound right at all. Pin and Tulip were perhaps their pseudonyms, when they’d come to kill Havelock, and been so… _Unsuccessful_. Waking up in the hospital, with Commander Vimes standing watch in the corner, Havelock had curled his hand in Rufus’ hair, had been so _gentle_ , had brushed their noses against one another and told him, reluctantly, that he had something to tell him.

Drumknott groaned as he tipped his head back, trying to work out the dream-tension in his neck. The library, at least, looked like it was closed – the machines lined up on the desks had all been turned off, and many of the lights were off. All the patrons were gone, and Vetinari had locked the doors.

Two hands, warm to the touch, touched against Drumknott’s back, and he jumped, choking out a sound. The hands did not relent: they dragged, thumbs pressed tightly either side of his spine, up his back, and then they closed around his shoulders, beginning to massage at the tight muscle there. He couldn’t help the way he groaned at the hot, liquid sensation of the tension being coaxed away by strong, skilled hands, and behind him, he heard Vetinari chuckle.

“Your shoulder looks stiff,” Vetinari murmured, even as he roughly massaged the shoulder in question, and Drumknott moaned as liquid honey seemed to pour under the flesh there.

“Won’t someone see us?” he asked, gasping in a breath.

“No,” Vetinari said. “Mr Lockheed has yet to begin his security rounds, young Agnes has gone home… Why, Rufus, I could do almost _anything_ to you.” Drumknott heard a strangled, whimpered noise, and then realized, with a burning flush that made itself known in his cheeks, that it had come out of his own throat. Vetinari laughed again, patting Drumknott’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s go home.”

“Home?” Drumknott repeated as he nonetheless stood obediently from the chair, and followed Vetinari[15] behind a pair of doors marked **STAFF ONLY**. As Vetinari helped him on with his coat, he gave Drumknott a funny look, and Drumknott tried his best not to hold his breath as Vetinari wrapped his scarf around his neck for him.

“Unless you were planning to sleep elsewhere tonight,” Vetinari said mildly. “What, did you want to sleep at that computer you were wrestling with as well? You’ve been sat there for over an hour, man.” An hour? Oh. He had thought it had been less than that, but he’d been very focused…

“There’s a file missing,” Drumknott mumbled, reaching up and rubbing at one of his eyes. He did feel tired, and he had to suppress a yawn. “I was trying to find it.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find it tomorrow,” Vetinari said quietly, and he took up a large, black umbrella from the vase in the corner. They moved out to the back of the library, into the pouring rain, and Drumknott opened it out, holding it over their heads as Vetinari locked the doors behind them, entering some sort of… He wasn’t sure what it was Vetinari was doing, punching numbers into another of the pads on the wall, but afterward, Vetinari stepped closer, and they shared the umbrella as they walked onward.

This wasn’t, in itself, unusual. Often, Drumknott would hold the umbrella above their heads as they walked somewhere, so long as it wasn’t too windy, but _this_ was… _Different._ As they walked down the street, Vetinari slid a hand around his _waist_ , so that they were side-to-side as they walked, and it…

It was undeniably _pleasant_ , but it was so strange, so—

It was so _wrong_.

“Good evening,” said a voice before them, and Drumknott looked beneath a shining gold umbrella, which was swathed in clouds of grey smoke, to see the familiar faces of Mr Moist von Lipwig and his wife, Adora Belle.

“Mr von Lipwig, Mrs Dearheart,” Drumknott said politely. Both Lipwigs gave him a funny look, and when Drumknott glanced up, his chin against the plane of Vetinari’s hard chest and rather appreciating the softness of his red jumper, he saw that Vetinari was _also_ peering down at him.

“How, pray, is the Post Office, _Moist_?” Vetinari asked, somewhat pointedly as he broke Drumknott’s gaze, and Drumknott felt off his footing, like he had in that dream where Lord Vetinari had made him go undercover as a flamenco dancer.

“I’m going to burn it down,” Lipwig announced in a good-natured tone. “All of it. I’ll let Stanley and the cat live, but not Groat. He’s driving me doolally this week.”

“Ah, but your charming wife would be so much better suited to the purpose of arson,” Vetinari replied, and Adora Belle smirked in her terrifying way, taking a long drag of cigarette.

“I don’t like you, Havelock,” she said mildly. She fluttered her eyelashes as she said it, and Drumknott did not miss the way Lipwig sighed besottedly as he looked at her.

“Ah, but I like you enough for the both of us, Adora Belle,” Vetinari replied, his voice full to the brim with charm. Drumknott was hyper aware of his lordship’s fingers, splayed on the side of his waist. “I had an email from Vimes this morning. I presume you two have also been roped into this…?”

“I don’t get what it’s for,” Lipwig said immediately.

“Nor I,” Vetinari replied broodingly.

“It’s a community centre,” Adora Belle said bluntly. “What do you mean, you don’t get what it’s for?” Drumknott did not know what it was for himself. _Community centre_. What did that mean, even?

“What’s that? _Community centre?_ We never had community centres at home, Spike. The community didn’t need a _centre_. They had homes.” Adora Belle rolled her eyes, and then she shifted her grip on Lipwig’s hip. “Why are they making _you_ do it?”

“Well, because Rufus and I are _diverse_ , of course,” Vetinari said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and Adora Belle sniggered. “Vimes, of course, will be his usual self, and Sybil—”

“Don’t pretend you don’t _love_ Sybil Vimes,” Lipwig said, and Drumknott stared in abject horror as Lipwig reached out, and _punched_ him. Lipwig reached out, and he _punched_ Lord Vetinari’s arm, his knuckles knocking his chest, right below the name badge there. It made Lord Vetinari _laugh_. “You _adore_ her. You worship the ground she walks on. You look at her reptiles and her snakes and in your mind, she is a _goddess_ of herpetology.”

“Are you trying to say that Sybil and I are quite good friends?” Vetinari asked. He seemed to be in good humour.

“Yes, I think so,” Lipwig said, and Vetinari chuckled. Drumknott was struggling to follow this conversation, but before he could do his best to get his bearings back, Vetinari was moving. “Good night, Havelock, Rufus.” Adora Belle gave them a smoky wave[16].

“Good night, Moist, Adora Belle,” Vetinari murmured warmly. It was only when they had walked up the dark, sodden street that Vetinari said, his voice full of query, “Mr _von_ Lipwig and Mrs Dearheart, hm?”

“Those are their names,” Drumknott muttered, feeling an embarrassed flush burn his cheeks.

“What _has_ gotten into you? So formal all of a sudden,” Vetinari said, and he led Drumknott into a stairwell, into a tiled tunnel bustling with people. Drumknott pulled down the umbrella, and he was grateful for the way that Vetinari kept a tight hold of his hand as they moved through the underground pathway. Reflexively, he reached into his pocket to remove his wallet when they reached the strange gates, and he felt himself drag the wallet over the side of the gate without wholly knowing why, but it released an approving chirrup and let him through to the other side. “Would you like to do anything tomorrow? The grocery delivery is coming at seven o’clock, but I’d be happy to go somewhere afterwards, if you like.”

“Go somewhere,” Drumknott repeated. “Like where?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Vetinari said, shrugging his shoulders. His fingers were still loosely entwined with Drumknott’s own, dry and beautifully warm against his own cold hand, and Drumknott had the other shoved into the scant warmth his pocket could offer. He wished that in the dream he still had Lady Roberta’s gloves. “We can just get on the train and go somewhere, if you like. Get out at the first village that looks cheerful. Or not get out at all, of course, I know how much you like that.”

Vetinari turned to smile at him. It was a very soft smile. It threatened to dimple Vetinari’s undimpled cheeks, the corners of his lips curving handsomely upward, and Drumknott _had_ seen this expression before, but he had only ever seen it directed at dogs, and never before at a person. _Certainly_ , he had never seen it directed at him.

“Rufus?” Vetinari asked, and his hand touched against Drumknott’s cheek. His smile gave way to concern, and Drumknott felt so _confused,_ but equally, there was a warm and fluttering sensation in his belly. “Are you alright?”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott woke at five o’clock precisely, feeling strangely out of place, and he rose with the general sensation clinging to him. It clung to him even once he had dressed for the morning’s work, and had walked down the stairs to begin setting out the day’s work.

He felt…

Odd. A little tired, perhaps.

But he kept thinking, nonetheless, about the Vetinari in the dream, the Vetinari who kept _touching_ him, who touched his cheek and his hands and his shoulder and his _hips_ , who was so tender with him, who treated him as… As what? A lover? A paramour? The idea was insane. Certainly, his mind had drifted, once or twice, to idle thoughts of Lord Vetinari, as handsome and in control was the man _was_ , in his day-to-day life…

And it wasn’t, exactly, that Vetinari was _conventionally_ handsome. Certainly, he was not. His nose, which was large and square, alongside his square jaw and sharp, angular cheekbones, gave him the appearance of having been recently hewed from rough marble, and not yet smoothed out; his icy blue eyes were hooded deeply by his brows, which were very thick; his lips were paper thin, and although his teeth were very white, they were somewhat crooked in places.

All of this, he knew.

With that said, however, Vetinari was always so perfectly _in command_ it was difficult not to have taken notice, once or twice, when he was particularly sarcastic in claiming a victory for himself, when he was particularly smooth and rapid in carrying out a movement, when he was taking a moment merely to concentrate on something, a letter in his hands…

He had thought of Vetinari only a _few_ times, and only in the most fleeting manner he might allow himself. This! This, why, this was _madness_. He was going absolutely _bursar **[17]**. _

Dreaming of Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, his _employer_ , touching him in such a casual manner, treating him so tenderly… And he enjoyed it. He _enjoyed_ it. He had woken, and he felt so beautifully well-rested, as if he had slept on clouds of feathers, and now, gods, he should like to return to that dreamscape.

Is that wrong of him?

It must be.

It must be.

And yet…

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“ _Dripp_!” the Archchancellor bellowed, and the young wizard in question froze in the corridor, his shoulders raised all the way in line with the back of his dirty neck. Ridcully scowled at the back of his neck, his eyebrows furrowing together to create one V of thickly sprouting, grey hair.

Dripp turned, and Ridcully recoiled slightly.

He always forgot what Dripp _looked_ like, until he was forced to regard the man directly, and then when he did, _ugh_. The—

Horror.

“Dripp, come here,” Ridcully muttered, wrinkling his nose, and Dripp oozed miserably back down the corridor toward him. “Where’s the other one?”

“The other one, sir?” Dripp asked.

“I don’t remember his name, blast it!” Ridcully snapped. “Expected to remember all the names of the students, what! There’s too many of you, and too many of you have got complicated names!”

“Yes, sir,” Dripp agreed deferentially, not understanding the point, but feeling that asking for clarification would be read as disagreement and thus, insubordination. There are some people for whom that is a constant threat, and Ridcully was one of them.  “Er, which… other one, though, sir?”

“The other one!” Ridcully said, racking his brain for a physical description that was stubbornly refusing to make itself available. His brain, quite overcome with the hideous physicality of Dripp’s features, the corner of one bubbling lip, his eyes thick at their edges with undisturbed discharge, his nose not to be spoken of, certainly could not conjure the forgettable nature of the _other one’s_. “You know, er… He looks like a… Oh, _blast it_ , Dripp, you’re about with him enough!”

“Henry Whittle, sir?” Dripp suddenly felt quite anxious. There was no rule, exactly, against sleeping in the same bed with one’s roommate, nor even sleeping with one’s head against his chest, but he didn’t much like the idea of the Archchancellor somehow deducing the habit in conversation, all the time.

“Yes! Whittle!”

“What about him, sir?”

“Where _is_ he?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What do you mean, you don’t _know_?”

“Er, well, he was… Er, he had a headache, sir, and he walked up to the infirmary to talk to the—”

“Well, why didn’t you _say_ that, man!?”

“Oh, well…” Dripp trailed off. “Why do you need him, Archchancellor?”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Ridcully muttered, and he shoved into Dripp’s arms a thick, manila file. Dripp stared down at it dejectedly. “This was on the floor outside my office, what. Give it to him, then.” Paperclipped to the front of the front of the folder was a small note, which read, **HENRY WHITTLE**.

The handwriting was somewhat peculiar, as if it had only learned the Morporkian script yesterday, and was fighting the urge to be something entirely different. The file was, unmistakably, the one that Dripp had taken from Room XB.

“Er, yes, Archchancellor, I will,” Dripp said, and Ridcully wandered off.

Dripp removed the note on the front, and dripped the folder into the nearest bin.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Rufus yawned as he rolled over in bed, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. Havelock, as usual, had already risen, and Rufus drew himself from the bed, neatly folding the blankets back perfectly into their place before he reached for his dressing gown and drew it on over his pyjamas. It was already warm – Havelock must have turned the heating on when he’d risen, because Drumknott could see the frost gathered on next door’s shed roof out of the bedroom window.

Dragging on his slippers, he heard the piano downstairs, and the scent of Havelock’s toast rose up the stair to meet him as he slowly descended the stairs. Havelock ordinarily favoured brown toast and a sensible egg for breakfast: he looked with some distaste upon Rufus’ muesli, which he ordinarily ate with fruit. He alternated the fruit every morning, as he felt this was sensible. Occasionally, Havelock would swipe a blueberry or a piece of banana from the surface of his muesli while his attention was directed elsewhere, and every time, Rufus would smile.

He was aware that some people ate big breakfasts, with a lot of moving parts – they would eat their eggs fried in thick grease, with beans and fried tomatoes and mushrooms that dripped oil when lifted upon a fork, and they would accompany this with platters of bacon and sausages, and perhaps black pudding. The meal would not have appealed to Rufus at any time, but for breakfast especially, it seemed _cloying_ , and all that meat…

He did not eat meat. Neither of them did.

Rufus didn’t see the need for it, for their varied diet allowed for proper protein and the like to be gleaned from beans, pulses, and the like. Havelock found meat somewhat distasteful, and the smell of meat cooking, Rufus was aware, made him feel quite ill. Occasionally, he would pick up a fillet of fish from the kosher fish market, but never salmon, to which Havelock had a distinct aversion.

He was always aware, in a vague way, that other people found the way in which they lived their life quite unnerving, or perhaps unsettling. Sam Vimes mentioned it often, when visiting to see them, or when they joined Sybil and Sam for dinner and bridge of an evening, but it had never really occurred to Rufus until the first time someone had said something about it… Perhaps Sam, or maybe it had been Havelock himself.

He had lived his life with a very particular order, even before he’d come across Havelock. He _liked_ order, and for that matter, order liked him, and suited him. Coming to live alongside Havelock had been…

Drumknott’s funny awareness clicked in as he crossed the threshold into the living room, and saw Vetinari sitting at a standing piano. He was only half dressed, his pyjama shirt unbuttoned to his belly and baring the many scars on his muscular chest. His fingers were moving easily over the keys, moving through a melody that was simultaneously deeply familiar, and entirely new.

He glanced at Drumknott, once more smiling that soft smile, and his voice lifted warm from his pale throat, a song that filled Drumknott with an indescribable sense of longing and sadness, although the lyrics comprised of utter nonsense.

 _“On the slow train, from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road_  
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,  
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street,  
We won’t be meeting again,  
On the slow train…”

Drumknott had never heard Lord Vetinari sing. It had never occurred to him that Lord Vetinari _could_ sing – being someone that could not sing a note himself[18], it was not something he often thought about, but he did not believe he would _cease_ to think of it now. Lord Vetinari’s voice was low and rumbling, but the sweet melody of it carried in the room, and Drumknott stood stunned, his lips parted.

“Oh, _come now_ , dearheart,” Vetinari said, reaching out his arms, and on reflex, Drumknott walked slowly to meet them. Dearheart. _Dearheart_! “Never have I known you not to _adore_ my rendition of any ditty by Flanders and Swann. What’s wrong?” He reached up, and Drumknott felt his warm thumb touch against his chin. “You’ve been so preoccupied.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Drumknott said, which was technically true. He didn’t know what anything was.

“You’re worrying me,” Vetinari murmured, his hands sliding to Drumknott’s hips, and Drumknott gasped as he pulled Drumknott down into his _lap_ , so that Drumknott sat perched upon his _thighs_. What a dream it was, that he should dream _that_ , should dream being chest to chest with Vetinari, his knees Drumknott’s seat, and Vetinari’s hands lingering on his body.

“I’m sorry,” Drumknott said. “I don’t mean to. I like the song.”

“I know,” Vetinari said softly. On his expression was a look of strange preoccupation, outright worry the likes of which Drumknott had never seen, and it made his chest ache slightly to see it. One of his hands slid up to cup Drumknott’s cheek, and Drumknott couldn’t help the fluttering of his breath as Vetinari leaned in, and _kissed_ him. On the mouth! It was a small kiss, nothing more than the press of warm, thin lips against his own, but it made Drumknott’s head spin, and Drumknott reached up automatically, to cup Vetinari’s cheeks and feel them under his own fingers. It was only a dream, wasn’t it? It was alright here, to let himself, to—

Vetinari’s mouth opened under the press of Drumknott’s own, his tongue clever and smooth but yielding, letting Drumknott kiss him, letting Drumknott _control_ it, and when they broke apart with a quiet _ptt_ of two mouths coming apart, Drumknott felt himself jolt in the other man’s lap at the sound of a sudden jittering noise from the kitchen.

“Sorry, Rufus,” Vetinari murmured ruefully, gently pushing Drumknott from his lap, and into a dreamy dimension somewhere between the living room carpet and some extra level of being, whereupon he walked on clouds. “My egg.”

“Ah,” Drumknott replied, and he followed Vetinari into the kitchen, allowing the instinct of routine to take him over. He poured muesli into a bowl, which was grey ceramic and rounded, not at all like the bowls in the Patrician’s Palace; he poured in a little milk, and a handful of raspberries. Their movements were so synchronised, even in the dream, that they sat down at the kitchen table at precisely the same time, and as Drumknott took up his tea, which Vetinari had made, he noted Vetinari’s mug as he took a sip from it.

It read, in neatly scripted black letters, _Crossword lovers Go Down._

He did not know what it meant.

He looked at his own mug, which was emblazoned with the phrase, “ _A paperclip can be a wondrous thing_.” The quote was attributed to somebody named MacGuyver. Vetinari was eating his egg with the expected delicacy, and Drumknott ate his own breakfast. It was… Quietly companionable. He did not ordinarily eat breakfast with Lord Vetinari – as a rule, Drumknott took his meals in the servants’ quarters – and it seemed odd, to perform such a basic, domestic part of a day with him. It was rather pleasant.

With that said, it did not feel _so_ ridiculous as to be appropriately abstract, in the dreamer’s sense.

“The crossword, now?” Drumknott asked, noting the newspaper on the side. There were, in fact, _multiple_ newspapers on the side. Neither were the Ankh-Morpork Times, but Vetinari’s mug had mentioned the crossword, and if there was a news sheet, then there would be a crossword too, right?

“Together?” Vetinari asked, seeming amused.

“Yes, of course,” Drumknott said, and he stood from the table, taking up the paper, and ignoring the lines of text as he moved for the puzzles section. The newspaper was… _Different_ to the Ankh-Morpork Times. There were more pictures, and more graphs. A few of the articles, oddly, had iconographs of their authors beside their by-lines, which Drumknott thought _quite_ silly. There were some puzzles he had never seen before when he arrived at the correct page. There were _two_ crosswords, a _cryptic_ crossword that seemed of decent quality, and a _quick_ crossword that was frankly insulting; there was a Jikan no Muda; there was a wheel of letters from which one derived words; there was a _brain trainer_ , which seemed to comprise of simple arithmetic…

“Poor showing,” Drumknott muttered. He had to bite back to keep from finishing the sentence with the natural “sir” it should end with.

“Oh?” Vetinari asked.

“Mmm,” Drumknott hummed. “Perhaps with the stopwatch, and I’ll fill them in?”

Vetinari blinked at him.

“I beg your pardon, Rufus?” he asked.

“Well,” Drumknott said. “It will be no exercise at all to just fill this quick one in. _I_ could do it in fifty.”

“Fifty?” Vetinari repeated, and Drumknott glanced down at the clues again before glancing back up.

“Yes, I think so,” he said. “Perhaps fifty-five.”

“Fifty or fifty-five what?”

“Seconds.”

“Rufus, what _rot_ ,” Vetinari said, putting his chin on his hand and looking at him amusedly. “You could not do even the _quick_ crossword in less than a minute.”

Drumknott frowned, and he felt a distinct and uncomfortable sensation of _hurt_ in his chest. It was not often that Lord Vetinari looked down upon his abilities as he estimated them, and certainly, he had never referred to something Drumknott had said as _rot_. Clenching his fists, he set the newspaper down on the table rather hard, offering Vetinari a pencil[19].

Vetinari took it, looking at Drumknott quizzically as he took the pencil, and then glanced down at the crossword. Drumknott saw the way his icy blue eyes took in the text on the page, and for a few seconds, he let himself lean over the page, reading each of the clues very carefully before he leaned back.

“Very well,” Vetinari said. “Five across, to offer assi—”

“Volunteer, exit, drift net, oblong, legume, trip up, pootle, onlooker, wool, heartfelt.” Drumknott’s palm was neatly held over his eyes to prevent him from looking against at the clues. He was aware, dimly, that he wasn’t wearing his spectacles, which he had never needed to see and had only worn since he had joined Lord Vetinari’s service, but it was still quite strange to be caught without them. He felt oddly naked without his glasses, after twenty years feigning blindness in front of anyone but Vetinari. He began on the down answers: “Soft soap, gun dog, at will, vent—”

“ _Rufus_ ,” Vetinari snapped, and Drumknott glanced at him. Vetinari had a very strange look on his face, his mouth twisted and set into a snarled line, his eyes narrowed, and his grip was very tight on the pencil. Drumknott saw, with a sort of sickly sensation of horrible understanding, that he had hurried through writing in the first few across solutions, and had stopped after _oblong_.

“You can’t do it,” Drumknott said softly. “But— But they’re so _easy_ , you could do those in your _sleep_. If _I_ can do it just looking at them like that, _you_ should…”

Vetinari was staring at him, uncomprehending.

Drumknott felt as if he might be sick.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott had a headache when he woke in the morning. He felt very strange as he rose to his feet, swathed in a strange and not-quite-real sensation, and he dressed as if in a daze. The pain was rather constant in his head, a sort of dull throbbing that expanded outward from the base of his skull and pealed through the inside of his head like noise from a bell.

A Vetinari that couldn’t do the crossword.

Odd.

He stumbled on the stair, gripping tightly at the bannister beside him to keep from falling, and the wave of dizziness he experienced was unsettling. The Dragon Flu, some years ago, had been like this – he’d had dreadful vertigo, and hadn’t been able to move his head without feeling like he was lurching on a sea vessel, and he’d been very nauseated for days. Drumknott had never been seasick in his life, but it had given him something of an aversion to sailing for quite a while afterward. After that, of course, he’d fallen into a fever, and he’d been insensible for days on end…

He hoped he wasn’t getting ill again. Hopefully, it was just something caused by the headache, and he clutched tightly at the bannister as he continued down the stairs.

“Mr Drumknott!” said a voice, and he flinched slightly. Vimes’ voice, gruff and barked out, seemed to crawl into his ear and knock some of the contents of his head about, and he was aware that his knuckles were white where they held onto the bannister. “Mr Drumknott?” Vimes said again, more softly.

“Lord Vetinari will be downstairs in fifteen minutes or so, your excellency,” Drumknott said, his eyes closed in the hopes it would make him steadier on his feet. It did not, and he felt himself swaying slightly as he leaned on the side of the stair, his whole weight leaning against the bar. “Unless you’d like me to wake him?”

“Drumknott, are you alright?” Vimes asked, and he looked at the figure of Vetinari’s clerk with concern. Drumknott – or _Rufus_ , as Sybil insisted on calling him – was always well put-together, sensible and with a sort of prim and delicate quality about him. Perennially red-cheeked, slight, and breakable, he and Lord Vetinari side-by-side tended to add up to two different sorts of frail individual.

Right now, Drumknott would have won the medal, though: his usually rosy cheeks were pale and chalky, and when he forced his eyes open to look at Vimes, his eyes were slightly unfocused.

“I— Quite well, your excellency,” Drumknott said quietly, looking like he was about to crumble into dust. “Merely a slight headcold, I think.”

“A headcold,” Vimes repeated doubtfully. “Mr Drumknott, go back to bed.”

“No, your excellency, I don’t think so,” Drumknott said, and he took another faltering step down the stairs: his knees buckled, and Vimes moved quickly, grabbing the clerk before he could fall down in a dead weight. His head lolled to the side against Vimes’ arm, and Vimes leaned forward, hefting the clerk – who was surprisingly heavy for how small he looked[20] – onto one of his shoulders.

This was the image Lord Vetinari was faced with a few moments later, when he gracefully descended the stairs, his robe hem brushing against the stairs as he came down. Vimes was standing up straight, wearing his daily armour as Watch Commander, _sans_ the expected plumes. His expression was dire, and he was not wearing his helmet, but his hair was mussed from its wear in the street outside. Thrown over his shoulder was the figure of Drumknott, not yet wearing his clerk’s robe and only clad in his suit, Vimes’ hand braced on the back of his knee to keep him in his place, quite limp, slung over his back.

With his spare hand – and, Vetinari could only assume, out of panicked instinct – Vimes saluted.

“He just fainted,” Vimes said.

“Into my office, I think,” Vetinari said, descending the stairs, and he did his best to ignore the abrupt anxiety that burned distastefully in his chest. It was possible, of course, that Drumknott had been poisoned. Certainly, there were attempts made to poison the Palace staff all the time, and Drumknott _was_ the target of a few plots, although…

Mr Fusspot rushed ahead of him as he came to the landing, leading the way to the Oblong Office, and he pushed it open, gesturing to the chaise long to the side of the room as he went to the speaking tube to call for Doctor Lawn as soon as possible.

Vimes laid Drumknott down on the couch, and he moved automatically out of the way as Vetinari moved forward. Nothing showed in Vetinari’s face. Almost nothing ever did, unless he wanted it to. He watched as Vetinari turned Drumknott’s pasty face to the side, his blue-veined hands moving to feel his forehead, and then two fingers moved to the edge of his neck to feel his pulse.

He got… _funny_ , when Drumknott was hurt. Vimes had noticed it before. He supposed it made sense: the Patrician’s personal clerk was one of the people that he really _couldn’t_ do without, and he’d seen Vetinari performing his two-step with the man for the benefit[21] of Post Master… Well, Chairman of the Royal Semaphore, and Master of the Royal Mint, and— _For Lipwig,_ anyway. Drumknott was _indispensable_ , in a way Vetinari’s staff rarely were. And that aside, _Sybil_ always implied…

Vimes did his best not to listen, when she implied what she implied. It always made his brain rattle in his head, rebelling at the horrible thought of Lord Vetinari reaching out to other people in _that_ way—

Vimes’ brain often rebelled where Vetinari was concerned.

“M’lord,” Drumknott slurred, his head shifting on the couch, his chin tipping back. He was breathing shallowly.

“Did you eat anything, drink anything?” Vetinari asked.

“Not poison,” Drumknott said. He spoke very well, Vimes knew, when he wasn’t slurring his words like this, like his mouth was full of cotton wool: Drumknott had grown up in Dimwell, and although he had a city boy’s accent, it was always wrapped around the Patrician’s neat vocabulary. “Woke up… Feeling funny. Dreams.” His hand fell forward, and touched the Patrician’s.

Vetinari didn’t seem to notice, but it struck Vimes as _odd_ , the way his fingers dropped weakly against Vetinari’s before they fell down again, his arm dropping against Drumknott’s side.

“The dreams again?” Vetinari asked.

“Mm. Sir, my head hurts…” He said it so plaintively, so _miserably_ , that for just a second, Vetinari’s face was _too_ blank.

It happened, sometimes, when something really caught him off-guard, and Vimes felt uncomfortable, like he was witnessing a private moment, but then Vetinari said, “Doctor Lawn will be here in a moment. It’s alright, Drumknott. Just wait a little while longer.”

Drumknott shuddered. “Wh’a’s it mean? Crossword— Crossword lovers… What’s it mean?”

“What does what mean?”

Drumknott mumbled something Vimes couldn’t decipher, and Vimes saw Vetinari’s head tilt. “Go down?” Vetinari repeated. “Go down where?”

 

[1] Drumknott generally referred to ex-partners exclusively by their titles, once they had broken up, and indeed, often used their titles _during_ the relationship, even whilst expressing great fondness. He believed that this was the only proper thing.

[2] Mr Lockheed, a yellow-eyed and gigantic gentleman of indeterminate age, had been the head of the Dark Clerks since before Drumknott had joined the Patrician’s staff, and had always liked Drumknott owing to what he called “the glint of bloodlust” in Drumknott’s eye. Drumknott had yet to catch a glimpse of this glint, but was pleased it was apparently there.

[3] A pub named in regrettable error, that ordinarily poured their beer before putting down the glass.

[4] This meant that he would speak in a voice that was almost the same volume as a normal man’s speaking voice (Drumknott’s natural volume was scarcely louder than a whisper), and that he would occasionally fidget. Fidgeting, in Drumknott’s mind, was the sign of a failing character.

[5]Lady Sybil named all of her dragons in this way. It was not that she thought it especially funny to do so: all of the dragon-breeders tended to name their dragons like this, and did not realize it was ridiculous until some outsider laughed. By “realize”, of course, I mean that they realized nothing, and continued in the same capacity.

[6] These unfortunate animals were named for their faces, which were so concave one could hang a spoon on their nose. This practice was ill-looked upon, however, as with the animal’s invariably inefficient nostrils and closed-in mouth, it would swiftly choke.

[7] The natural inverse of the Roundworld’s retriever, the bandoner had been bred to hunt swamp dragons, and take them as far away from one’s property as possible, that they might abandon them there, before returning home.

[8] Vetinari ordinarily used the word “friend” in a rather sardonic way, and to call Sybil his “friend”, he felt, would imply an irony inaccurate to the situation.

[9] The idea of Havelock Vetinari wearing a _badge_ almost knocked Drumknott over.

[10] Drumknott felt that hand gestures in the course of regular conversation were vulgar, and looked poorly upon those who did so much as wave too ebulliently.

[11] This was a particular habit of any graduate from the Assassins’ Guild, but in general, when given the choice between synonyms, Vetinari would tend to the most obscure available.

[12] Dreams, of course, entirely without our noticing, ordinarily seem to skip bits and pieces, like a needle jumping on a record and missing whole halves of verses. Real life does this less often, and when it does, we rarely notice.

[13] Few people risked this gambit in day-to-day conversation, but Drumknott had a curious immunity to Vetinari’s stares.

[14] Such as the most affecting nightmare he had had the year before, wherein he had entered the Palace Library to discover the books had been reorganised, horror of horrors, by _colour_.

[15] Both in life and in dreams, it was Drumknott’s natural inclination to follow Vetinari, even if he didn’t have the slightest idea what Vetinari was thinking. Vetinari had never let him fall yet.

[16] It might be noted that despite his general disapproval of waving as a practice, Drumknott approved of Adora Belle Deartheart’s waves. They were square, neatly delivered, and allowed for no silly dance of the fingertips in the process.

[17] This had become a rather common, if insensitive, saying in Ankh-Morpork.

[18] Drumknott had been officially banned from so much as singing a note in his school choir, and had been banned on principle from the music room. The sound he produced upon attempting to sing was truly ear-splitting.

[19] Drumknott’s night shirt tended to hold a notebook, two to three pencils, and the key to the file room in his office at the Palace. In this dream-world, it still possessed both of the former.

[20] As with Lord Vetinari, who was also a good deal heavier than he looked, Vimes was grimly aware that Drumknott’s hidden depths were likely in muscle rather than fat.

[21] Or, more accurately, to the chagrin of.


	3. Chapter 3

Across the city, at five AM precisely on Tuesday morning, Rufus Drumknott woke up. Abruptly, Henry Whittle’s headache dissipated. It had been splitting his skull in _two_ for the past eight hours, leaving him dizzy and out of it, blinking into the darkness of the evening, and all of a sudden, it was…

 _Gone_.

“Oh, no, I’m feeling fine now,” Henry said, sitting up in the bed in the infirmary. He was in a hurry to get out of the infirmary, now that it struck him as an option. It was a dismal place, the infirmary at UU: it was rare that a student might actually be convinced to make their way here, as the infirmary had exactly two staff. There was Matron, an incredibly broad-shouldered, stout woman with a sweet-natured personality, whose knowledge of medicine seemed to consist only of odd folk remedies you had once heard of and had kept you awake at night for three nights worrying about, and Nurse Irritable Stonespatter[1], who was a dwarf, always carried an axe, and who probably _did_ know a bit about medicine, but looked at you with such fatal severity you would not need it for much longer.

“Are you,” glowered Nurse Irritable. It was not really a question, Henry didn’t think.

It had been awful, the night before. Around eleven o’clock, he’d woken up with just… The worst, most _desperate_ pain he’d ever had in his life, and he’d heaved in a gasp.

Dripp had been asleep on his chest: Dripp was always asleep on his chest, or on his back, if Henry laid down on his front. This was where Dripp slept. It was not that they had _agreed_ on the subject of Dripp sleeping in Henry’s bed. It wasn’t something they had planned. Merely that one night, Dripp had been in Henry’s bed instead of Henry’s own, and Henry hadn’t minded. The next night, Dripp had lain a little closer, and Henry had gotten closer too, because it was cold in the dormitories, and Dripp was… _Dripp_ , but he was _warm_.

It had just become a habit.

And there were…

 _Other_ habits, too. Habits men tended to share together, when they shared a bed.

But that was neither here nor there, and as most people did their best to avoid acknowledging Dripp (because he was Dripp), and also acknowledging Henry (partly because he was Henry, but also because it was often a gateway, willingly or otherwise, to acknowledging Dripp), no one ever said a word about it.

And it was _nice_ , Henry would insist, if anybody ever asked, which they never had, and wouldn’t. He didn’t _like_ Dripp, no, not exactly, but he was very warm, and sometimes they just lay there and talked about classes and assignments, or about other things, and when Henry’s shoulder was giving him a hard time[2], he would stroke it softly, in a sort of absent-minded way, as if instinct alone made him touch a poorly shoulder and try to soothe it down. It was _nice_.

And last night, Dripp had been asleep on his chest when he’d just woken up with this _splitting_ headache, and it had hurt him so much that he just… He’d _needed_ to get up, had stumbled around, and Dripp had had to all but carry him up to the infirmary. And the headache, gods, it had gotten worse and worse, and now, it had just—

Stopped.

Henry Whittle wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He didn’t even like to look regular horses in the mouth, or in the face, for that matter. They were frightening animals.

And so he dragged himself out of the bed, ignoring the barking orders of Nurse Irritable following him into the corridor. He did not know that downstairs, awake because he had not slept, Dripp was just leaving the dormitories. He did not know that Dripp had not slept because Henry hadn’t been in the bed with him, and that he was so used to it that he couldn’t sleep without; he didn’t know that the Archchancellor, who _also_ hadn’t slept[3], had just accosted Dripp in the corridor, to demand where Henry was.

Henry came out of the infirmary, feeling fit as a fiddle, and came to the top of the stairs.

It was at this moment, two floors down and a few corridors hubwards, that Dripp dropped a strange, manila folder into a rubbish bin, and Henry folded like a cheap suit, and crumpled as he fell down the stairs.

Arms folded over his chest, his mouth set into a deep scowl behind the thick black of his beard, Nurse Irritable watched the wizard slide down to the landing below, and then walked purposefully down to collect him.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“What does it mean, sir?” Drumknott found himself asking. He was, he realized, a little damp from his shower, a warm glow of sticky wetness lingering on his skin, and his hair was damp and plastered to his head. Vetinari, whose hair was also slightly wet, but fully-dressed and adjusting the collar of one of those strange, high-necked jumpers, looking at him oddly. Drumknott stood in the doorway to the en suite, and they were back in the bedroom, in Vetinari’s bedroom.

He was…

He was wearing _trousers_. The trousers were… The were made of a rough, blue fabric. They were tight. They were _very_ tight, around Vetinari’s backside and his thighs, although they gave out some in the ankle, and the rough fabric looked idea for horse riding on the like.

“ _Sir_ again, is it?” Vetinari asked amusedly. Drumknott was only wearing a robe, belted loosely over his belly: he was naked of anything else, and his feet were in the carpet. It was the same day, he thought, as it had been when he’d woke up from the dream a little while ago— Oh, and he’d fallen, hadn’t he? He remembered it, remembered falling down against Vimes… “Well, _Rufus_ , I shall be gratified to lend you my service in promoting your education. Pray, elucidate.”

Vetinari had moved closer, and he reached out, playing his fingers over Drumknott’s damp chest. Drumknott sighed softly, his eyes fluttering closed at the warmth of them, the pleasure of the delicate touch. “Oh, the… the mug,” he mumbled, concentrating on the digit playing circles over his sternum.

“The mug?” Vetinari repeated.

“Crossword lovers Go Down,” Drumknott said, repeating the cryptic phrase. “What does it _mean,_ sir?” For a moment, there was silence, and Drumknott opened his eyes. Vetinari was looking at him with a curious light shining in the depths of his icy blue eyes, his thin lips slightly parted, his gaze concentrated on his face. “Sir?” Drumknott asked again, before remembering that in this dreamy world, he wasn’t meant to call Vetinari “ _sir_ ”.

“What does it mean, you ask?” Vetinari asked. He spoke in little more than a whisper, and seemed to be savouring the words. The fingers playing against Drumknott’s chest slid forward, a thumb dipping into the hollow of his collarbone, the long fingers spreading against the side of his neck. “Are you asking me to _define_ it for you, Rufus?”

“I—” Vetinari squeezed slightly, and Drumknott shivered. “Yes, please, just… Tell me what it means.”

“What if I show you?” Vetinari asked, and Drumknott jumped as his other finger undid the belt at his stomach, parting the robe. He was flushed and confused, not sure what this dream _meant_ , what was… What was… No, no, he’d been on the stairs, he’d _fainted_ , he’d—

“Show me, sir?” Drumknott asked. And then he remembered, and said, “Oh, no, I meant, not si—”

Vetinari’s mouth was crushed against his, and Drumknott grunted out a noise of surprise that was muffled by Vetinari’s tongue and the lips brushing against his own. Vetinari’s hands were pushing the robe off his shoulders, and Drumknott felt a desperate cringe of embarrassment burn through his body at the thought of the Patrician seeing him _nude_ , especially with the excitement he was feeling, especially—

“Let me show you, dear man,” Vetinari whispered against his lips, and then he grabbed Drumknott by the hips, throwing him down onto the bed. Drumknott jolted as he fell, heaving in a gasp of noise, but Vetinari’s hands were already sliding over the backs of his thighs, and he let out a noise of surprise.

 _“Sir_ —”

He heard Vetinari laugh, and the hands slid upward, grabbing handfuls of his buttocks in a firm grasp, and Drumknott dragged in a breath, grasping at the sheets beneath him, his hips pressed a little _too_ pleasurably against the sheets beneath him. Vetinari’s finger, but no, his _breath_ , that was his _nose_ , was playing over the back of his knee, and he felt the mattress shift beneath him as Vetinari dragged his mouth over the side of his thigh, even as his two handfuls of thick flesh pushed apart.

Air was heavy on his wet skin, and Vetinari kissed his thigh, kissed the crease where it adjoined his seat, drew higher, _licked_ —!

Drumknott was aware the noise he let out was something that might, in some circles, have been called a _scream_. Vetinari did not seem to be deterred. “A colloquialism, Rufus: to _go down_ on a partner,” he said conversationally, with a quiet laugh, and dipped his head again.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

The scream split the room, the sound desperate, ragged and echoing off the walls of the Oblong Office, and Vimes jolted in his place. It was a cutting noise, and not one he’d ever heard before – once or twice, in one altercation or another, he’d seen Drumknott take on terrible injuries, seen him get cut by assailants, once had seen him take a burn to his forearm from a hot poker at Kettleton’s blacksmiths, and he hadn’t even flinched, had just whipped out with his other hand and broken the man’s nose. Quick, clean, efficient… And afterwards, Vimes remembered, he had sat very still as Igor had looked after the burn, had cleaned it, bandaged it. He’d stared straight forward, the image of composure.

It had been _creepy_ , a horrible ghost of what Vetinari was like in a similar situation. But that noise? _That_ noise? That was— _A lot_ , to hear from Drumknott.

Vimes saw Vetinari’s head turn, saw his lips part, saw his eyes _widen_. It was the most expressive he’d ever _seen_ him, and he followed Vetinari’s gaze to Drumknott on the chaise long, where Doctor Lawn was already attending him. He’d only just rushed into the room, brought in one of the quick hansoms: Doctor John “Mossy” Lawn was once one of the[4] genuinely competent doctors in the city, but now he trained younger doctors, _better_ ones… Vimes had never realized Vetinari had him to call, before he’d rushed itn. It hadn’t even been five minutes, even, but Drumknott had been _still_ , had been mumbling, and then had dropped back on the couch, had slipped under again…

And Doctor Lawn said there was nothing _wrong_ with him, that he could see – he was just asleep.

Within five minutes more, though, Drumknott is awake. He jolted in his place, his cheeks flushed and a slight sweat on his skin, and Lawn frowned.

“Your heart’s racing, lad,” he said quietly. Drumknott coughed, and Vimes watched him as he sat up on the couch, pressing his knees together and sitting straight up, but Doctor Lawn’s hand reached out to stop him from standing to his feet.

“I’m fine,” Drumknott said hurriedly, shaking his head. His hair was a _mess_ , his hair product doing nothing to fix the mussed shape of his usually combed-back hair, and he was breathing shallowly, but he did look… _Better_. No more dizziness, now, and his gaze was flitting around the world, between the three other men.

He was _quaking_ , Vimes saw, shivering in his place. He didn’t seem able to keep his trembling thighs still, but he grasped at them in the apparent hope it might help.

“I’m fine,” he repeated. “Let me get—”

“Drumknott,” Vetinari said softly. It was the sort of voice that said, “I’m not going to speak any louder than this, and trust me, you don’t _want_ me to.” It was the sort of voice that said, “Do you even _know_ what I could do you to you?” It was the sort of voice that said, although it didn’t need to say, “I am in charge, and you will do as I say, _or else_.” Vetinari’s voice had a habit of being exactly this communicative, regardless of how little he was saying.

Drumknott looked at Vetinari, his gaze pleading, even as Lawn took his pulse.

Vimes watched as Drumknott, looking about ready to crumble into dust, he looked so embarrassed, leaned in, cupping his hand to whisper in Doctor Lawn’s ear. Ordinarily, Drumknott spoke in a voice so quiet as to be a murmur anyway, and Vimes couldn’t hear a _thing_ as he spoke in Lawn’s ear, although he saw Lawn’s eyebrows raise, saw his surprised expression[5].

Could Vetinari hear him? It was impossible to tell, looking at his face.

“Well,” Lawn said quietly. “I think we’ll put you to bed for a few hours, if it’s all the same to you, Mr Drumknott. Just to make sure.”

Drumknott’s expression was nothing short of horrified. “Actually, I—”

“That will be fine, Doctor Lawn. Our thanks.”

Vimes took in Drumknott’s expression as he looked back at Vetinari. It was not an indignant expression: Drumknott was the sort of bland man that reserved indignation for people using the wrong sort of paperclip, or for people that dog-eared book pages. He was an officious little man, and while Vimes knew he was much more aggressive than he _looked_ , he was still… Bland. In this moment, blandness seemed to have been thrown to the wind. Drumknott’s chin was pushed out slightly, and for just a second, he saw what looked like a glitter of defiance in his eyes, although it clashed horribly with the humiliated burn in Drumknott’s cheeks.

He hated attention – Vimes knew _that_. He remembered five or six years ago, when Carrot had wished him a happy birthday while Vetinari and Drumknott were walking the dog in town, having been to the Post Office. Drumknott had smiled, although he’d blushed furiously, and he’d given a nod, but Fred and Nobby had been excited at the idea of the Patrician’s clerk being a person, had latched onto it, had both wished him a happy birthday, had asked how old he was, and Drumknott had looked so overwhelmed by it… Not _shy_ , no: he wasn’t _shy_. But he was used to keeping to the shadows, and particularly, the shadow that Vetinari cast, in which Drumknott fit quite perfectly.

Vetinari was staring right back at him, one eyebrow just slightly raised in question, and Drumknott…

Within the moment, it was gone, and Drumknott bowed his head. “My apologies, sir,” he said miserably, and Vimes wondered if it was for being _ill_ , or for his almost-show of disobedience.

“Take him upstairs, would you?” Vetinari asked Lawn quietly, and Lawn gently took Drumknott under the elbow, helping the clerk up. Drumknott was standing on slightly shaky knees, and he stumbled slightly as they wobbled beneath him, threatening to tip him onto the floor, but that just made Drumknott look _more_ mortified.

Vetinari didn’t look at Drumknott as Lawn helped him out, and when he looked to Vimes, he said, “Why are you here?”

“It’s not important,” Vimes said.

“Isn’t it?” Vetinari replied softly. “You came to my office before it is even six o’clock in the morning, for no reason at all? Why, Commander Vimes, ought I invite you for _breakfast_?”

“No, I meant,” Vimes snapped, giving Vetinari an irritable stare, and he gestured vaguely in the direction of the corridor. “It’s just bureaucratic _nonsense_ , lord, if Drumknott’s ill, I can just—”

“Please, do tell me the _nature_ of the nonsense,” Vetinari said.

“ _My lord_ ,” Vimes snapped, not for the first time, frustrated at Vetinari’s general ability to prioritise work over _people_. “That’s—”

Vetinari’s gaze became colder. It was a particular talent he had that some members of the aristocracy had a version of, but that none of them could do like _Vetinari_ did. The rest of his face remained the same, unmoving, but his eyes seemed to cool by several degrees. Lord Vetinari’s eyes, which were already icy, became glacial.

He did care, of course. Vimes knew that. Vetinari always _cared_ , he just didn’t—

Vimes’ gaze shifted away from Vetinari’s face, and he concentrated on a point about a foot to his left, and slightly above Vetinari’s head. “Well, sir,” he said, powerless to do anything else. “It’s about…”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

A half hour or so after Drumknott had come back upstairs, now having changed his clothes, he sits on the edge of his bed, stripped down to his shirt sleeves so that Doctor Lawn can slide a cuff onto up to his arm to take his blood pressure.

“And these dreams have been making you feel disoriented?” he asked seriously.

“Not _especially_ ,” Drumknott said. He was not, as one would say, a good patient, and had never been one. He was sensible in the face of pain, and would ordinarily endure an Igor’s ministrations or, in the case of the exceptional, a doctor’s, but he did not care for such things as _bedrest_ , and he didn’t put much stock in careful examinations if he felt he was well. This was a flaw, Lawn knew, that he shared with his employer. “Merely that I’ve been sleeping more deeply than usual, I expect.”

“Have you changed your sleeping schedule at all?” Lawn asked as he inflated the cuff.

“No, sir.”

“You get six hours a night?”

“Thereabouts.”

There was a crisp, quiet knock on the door, and Drumknott felt the humiliated burn in his cheeks as he said, “Come in.” He was aware, with Lord Vetinari’s hearing, that he had likely heard _exactly_ what Drumknott had whispered in Lawn’s ear, and he couldn’t stop the memory from replaying in his mind, of not-Lord Vetinari laying him out on the bed and…

He stared down at the floor as the door opened and shut with a neat, quiet click.

“And how,” Vetinari asked in a softly silky voice, “fares the patient?”

“I can come back down in a few minutes,” Drumknott said, and Vetinari arched an eyebrow.

There was a moment’s pause, and then Vetinari said, directing the question to Doctor Lawn, “It is traditional, is it not, to defer to one’s doctor instead of one’s own propensity for stubbornness?”

Doctor Lawn looked at the Patrician, whose expression was blank. He looked to Drumknott, whose expression was blank in precisely the same way. There were times, he mused, when you dealt with pairs of people that were so alike, it was frustrating to be in the room with them. Sometimes, these pairs comprised of two siblings or two lifelong friends who’d grown up together and, like two trees in the same pot, had grown around each other’s knots and branches; sometimes, these pairs comprised of a father and son or a mother and daughter, where the latter had no idea the extent to which they were not merely a product of, but a copy of, the former; and other times, the worst times, it was a couple who shared so much in common that they didn’t realize precisely how many flaws they shared unless an outside party pointed them out.

Of course, the Patrician and his personal clerk came under _none_ of these categories, but Doctor Lawn privately felt that the last was perhaps the most similar. Being a well-practised doctor adept in avoiding giving way to the lover’s tiff, or whatever version of it existed between Patrician and clerk, he avoided the question, and said, “Mr Drumknott here seems to be faring just fine, and he probably can come back down in a few minutes. Seems to be to be a funny turn, and I’d say you should keep an eye on it. Hopefully, it was just a fainting spell, but unless it happens again, I can’t know more.”

 “You can remove the sphygmomanometer from my arm, then?” Drumknott asked quietly. He believed in using the proper name for things. It took Lawn a half-second to know what he meant.

Doctor Lawn smiled, and he undid the cuff, watching the way Drumknott hurriedly moved to do up his shirt cuff once more, as if the Patrician seeing some of his bare wrist would be enough to scar him for life. There is nothing, he thought to himself, in a kind of resigned way, so queer as folk.

“Call me again if you have any problems,” he said cheerfully, and Vetinari gave him a neat nod as he exited the room, leaving the two of them alone in Drumknott’s bedroom. It was a modest room. A small bed rested against the side of one wall, and a modest wardrobe hosted all of Drumknott’s clothes; one wall was taken up by a bookshelf, which was full of neatly arrayed books, and some stationery on display. He had a small writing desk, upon which was a half-drafted letter to an aunt in Sto Radley.

For a few long moments, the two of them existed in silence. Neither of them breathed in such a way that was audible to the rest of the room: both were in the habit of existing silently, and neither of them made noise without point or intention. He was always like that, Vetinari remembered, when he began in Vetinari’s service: always, he was quiet, moving as silently as a ghost, but now, he moved even _more_ quietly. His boots were better suited to the purpose than the bluchers he used to wear, and he could move quicker, too, could easily judge the natural rhythms and the creaks on floorboards or beams, or even on roof tiles.

Finally, Drumknott said, “My sleep was disturbed in the night. That was, I might surmise, the reason for my fainting spell.”

The Patrician said nothing. This strategy was one he employed upon almost everyone he spoke to: he existed so silently, and was capable of such stillness, that many people were inevitably moved to speak, simply in desperation at filling the tense air that spanned between them. Of course, this technique did not work on Drumknott: he had been very well-schooled in it.

Lord Vetinari felt an uncomfortable twist in the pit of his stomach as he looked down at his clerk. Unmistakably, it was _anxiety_ : he worried, and he worried about the clerk in front of him. Certainly, he had worried about Drumknott before, when he’d been ill with the flu, or when he’d been injured. Still, he recalls the way Drumknott had been desperate to work in the aftermath of his attack my Messrs Pin and Tulip, had refused his promotion, how Vetinari had worried then.

Because then, of course, he had known what the problem was.

Drumknott has never attempted to deceive him before.

“Is it magic?” Vetinari asked.

“I don’t think so, sir,” Drumknott said quietly. “I don’t see why it would be. It’s just… It’s just my dreams, as of late. I’ve been having vivid ones, and they must be disturbing my sleep, setting me off my rhythm. I’m sure it will even out.”

“Your dreams about this figure, Morpheus?” Vetinari asked, arching an eyebrow, but Drumknott followed his train of meaning before he laid it out clearly upon the air before them. He was good at that. Vetinari felt…

Well, that was the problem, wasn’t it?

Vetinari _felt_.

“They weren’t _about_ him,” Drumknott said softly. “It was just a word, a snatch of something I didn’t understand. Dream logic, made-up words, made-up phrases.”

Vetinari had, of course, heard what Drumknott had whispered in Lawn’s ear, although he had no intention to reveal that he had, for the sake of the young man’s already blooming embarrassment. It strikes him as _subtly wrong_ , that a young man should _faint_ , and then experience—

He had _screamed_. It had been loud, loud and desperate, and Vetinari had thought him plagued by some awful pain until he’d heard him hiss the cause in Doctor Lawn’s ear. Drumknott is rather old, of course, to be plagued by such intense nocturnal emissions, particularly in the wake of abrupt unconsciousness.

Vetinari mused on the cryptic phrase he had mumbled to Vetinari, before he’d fallen fully into unconsciousness. “Such as ‘ _Crossword lovers go down?’”_

Drumknott flinched. Vetinari racked his memory to see if he could recall a time when Drumknott had flinched before, but he could not recall a single happenstance. Loud noises, screams, even knives thrown at his head: Drumknott remained utterly composed in the face of all of it.

“Did I say that to you?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” Vetinari said. “You asked me what it meant.”

“Oh,” Drumknott said, and he stared into the space in front of him, one of his hands going to his mouth. “I oughtn’t have…” He cleared his throat, and he looked up to meet Vetinari’s gaze, a desperate flush of heat colouring both of his cheeks. “I wasn’t really awake. I’m sorry.”

“You won’t enlighten me?” Vetinari asked.

“Lord Vetinari, I will give you the entirety of my life’s savings to inhume me. I should prefer that to answering the question.” Vetinari, for a moment, wanted to laugh. Despite the gravity of the situation, that Drumknott should jest about something so serious as his own inhumation, and in the face of a mere _definition_ … Vetinari could match jocularity for jocularity.

“Do your life’s savings, Drumknott, amount to two-hundred-and-twenty-thousand dollars, as is the Guild price set upon your head?” He knew they did not. He knew the precise figures of Drumknott’s life savings, and he knew that most sensible men would be saving them for retirement.

Drumknott had stopped saving for his retirement about three years into Vetinari’s service, when the reality of his situation set in. A significant portion of his wage went into a bank account that was in his eldest nephew’s name, who was to be seventeen come Grune; some more went into bank accounts in the names of his two nieces, but the were not yet even ten. The rest of his money, Vetinari knew, was held in a savings account, and when he died, it would be split between his sister’s children.

He did not expect to retire. He was probably correct in that. It made Vetinari’s chest give an uncomfortable pang.

“No, sir,” Drumknott answered.

“Close, even?”

“No, sir.”

“I fear, my dear man, that it would be _unfair_ of me to undercut the rate set by the Guild to which I was such a happy member for so many years,” Vetinari said softly. “So you will simply have to tell me.”

“It is a colloquialism,” Drumknott said haltingly. “To _go down_ on a partner. It—” He cleared his throat, and then he raised his chin, meeting Vetinari’s gaze. “It means, sir,” he said in a smoother voice, albeit a slightly forced on, “to perform oral sex on somebody.”

“Ah, I see,” Vetinari said, with a small, polite smile. The mystery of the situation was deepening with every moment that passed.  “A pun. Crossword lovers _Go Down_. Very good.  You are not, I would note, ordinarily quite so _moralistic_ , Drumknott. Have we or have we not specifically combed through the reaches of the vulgar slang of the Entertainment District in the past, in order to ensure our legislation left no gasps or untrimmed threads?”

“We have,” Drumknott said slowly. It was true, too. He didn’t much like to visit the Entertainment District, as he ordinarily saw far more of the average woman than he would like to, but it was not ordinarily in his nature to fluster in the face of licentious language, nor sordid behaviour. He needed an explanation, he knew, and he sighed, burying his face in his hands. His embarrassment was not at entirely an act of theatre as he asked, in a small voice he knew was partially muffled by his palms, “Did Vimes hear me?”

“I couldn’t say,” Vetinari said quietly. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Drumknott said.

“Good,” Vetinari said. He was still hiding something, that much was clear, but Vetinari did not believe it was something _professional_. He knew that Drumknott wouldn’t betray him, in one way or another – it was likely something to do with _what_ he had dreamed, and if it was sexual in nature, he supposed it made sense, that he should be embarrassed.

His stomach gave a slight twist, and this was _not_ anxiety. The dark, coiling feeling in the pit of his belly had nothing to do with nerves, and he raised his chin slightly, looking down at Drumknott. He was wearing different trousers to the ones he’d worn earlier.

Hm.

“I will fare without you for another hour or so,” Vetinari said quietly. “I will see you after breakfast.”

Drumknott stared at him, his expression stricken, and then he schooled it once more into blankness. Nonetheless, Vetinari could see the slight hint as to tension at his jaw, and at the corner of his mouth.

“Very well, sir,” he said, in a voice like steel.

Vetinari ignored it, and he went downstairs, to proceed about the light duties of the morning without his clerk to hand. It felt unnatural, at this point, to work without Drumknott’s quiet movements in the Oblong Office, flitting back and forth between his office and Vetinari’s own. He missed it, even.

 _Hm_.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Doctor John “Mossy” Lawn slowly ascended the stairs to the infirmary of Unseen University. It was the second time in the same day that he had been called out to deal with some _pressing matter_ , although this one, he admitted, was more to do with _a personal favour_ to someone he was friendly with[6], than the pain of whatever his disobedience might consist of in the first.

Mr Drumknott, Vetinari’s personal clerk, had been… _Odd_. He’d felt alright, when Doctor Lawn had had a look at him – his temperature hadn’t been high, and although his pulse had been racing a little, that had been _expected_ , with the nature of the dream he’d been having. What had he called it? The _funniest_ thing, hearing the way a clerk talks, compared to the average seamstress: _A dream of a greatly personal nature, to wit one I should not relate to my employer and the City Watch Commander_.

Doctor Lawn exhaled to keep himself from chuckling, but even with the dream _itself_ aside…

Drumknott wouldn’t wake. He’d patted the young man’s face, pinched him slightly, spoken to him, and he’d been _insensible_ , completely unconscious. And while he’d awoken, and been alright after an hour or so’s bedrest, he’d given him quite strict instructions not to overstrain himself, and to call for him again if anything similar happened.

It had been… _frustrating_ , not to be able to actually figure anything _wrong_. It’s like that sometimes, but that doesn’t mean one ought to stand for it: that’s what being a doctor is _about_ …

He steps into the infirmary.

“Ah, Mossy!” Ridcully said, clapping hold of his hand in a firm shake. Ridcully believed in firm handshakes, and ordinarily, they were firm enough to shake many men to their cores, but Doctor Lawn was well-used to them. “Well, er, here we are.”

Doctor Lawn looked at the sad specimen of man curled tightly up in the chair. The wizard, dressed in a light brown robe, was of indeterminate age, and his exceedingly knobbly knees, which make sharp tent poles beneath his skirt, were in line with his head, his chin resting on the canopy they made. Doctor Lawn could see his ankles, which were scuffed and grazed in places, shoved hastily into boots he apparently wore without socks. His face was a horror: his eyes, which were closed in sleep, were thick with crust at their edges, clinging to his eyelashes, and his nose was leaking a tremendous amount of yellow-green discharge. His mouth, which was slightly ajar, was dribbling at its edge. The wizard, as far as Mossy could tell, was asleep, or possibly dead.

“Good gods, man,” Doctor Lawn said. “What’s _wrong_ with him?”

“Oh, not Dripp,” Ridcully said with a disparaging wave of his hand. “He’s always like that.”

“ _Really_? Mustrum, I—”

“No, _this_ is the patient,” Ridcully said, walking further into the infirmary, and Doctor Lawn tore his gaze away from the creature called “Dripp”, who greatly resembled an oozing sore, of which Lawn had seen many, and instead looked to the figure in the bed. Standing beside the bed, one of his knuckles pressed against his lip, was Ponder Stibbons.

“Hello, Doctor Lawn,” he said quietly. “He won’t wake up. We don’t know what it is – Dripp says he’s not done anything that should do _this_ to him, and we’ve not been able to figure out any magical reason for this. He’s just… You know. He’s just asleep.”

Hm.

Doctor Lawn moved forward, setting his bag down on the table beside the bed, and he leaned over the young man in question. He wasn’t, thankfully, anything like Dripp. His features were bland and forgettable, and were currently slack in repose. Henry Whittle’s head was not hot, and when Doctor Lawn took his temperature, it wasn’t out of the ordinary; his pulse was even and rhythmic…

He didn’t wake, though, no matter what Doctor Lawn did. Even catching the heel of his foot with a pin didn’t make him so much as _stir_.

“Mr Stibbons,” Doctor Lawn said quietly, “would you send word to the Palace, please?”

Ponder paused a moment, his eyes widening. “Doctor Lawn?”

“Tell them Mr Whittle’s asleep, and that he’s not waking up, and ask if Mr Drumknott’s had any contact with him, would you?”

“Mr Drumknott?” Ponder repeated. “Well, it’s— Four o’clock? He’ll be downstairs right now.”

Doctor Lawn looked at Ponder for a second, and then back to the sleeping form of Whittle. “Is he?” he asked. “Go downstairs and see, would you?”

“Oh,” Ponder said, awkwardly. “Are you— Are you sure?”

“Oh, go get him, Stibbons,” Ridcully said, waving his hand, and reluctantly, Stibbons left the infirmary to go down to Room XB and find him.

It was not that Ponder Stibbons didn’t _like_ Drumknott, exactly. He had met the man a few times before – about five years Ponder’s senior, Drumknott and he, Ponder felt, had quite a few things in common. Both of them were neat, well-organised men who had that rare capacity for what was even rarer than _usual_ in Ankh-Morpork, and especially around wizards: common sense.

And Drumknott, Ponder had noticed, had a very easy way around the Archchancellor, and the Archchancellor quite liked him, even: Drumknott neatly sidestepped most of the attempts to clap him on the back, but he politely nodded and didn’t seem to have any trouble following the Archchancellor’s trains of thought, or interrupting at exactly the right point.

With that said, Drumknott was…

He was, on some level, _unsettling_.

As a rule, he did not show any emotion with people he didn’t know, and he was usually so delicately polite that you felt as if, from his perspective, socialising with you was no different to gently taking up an insect with your handkerchief and placing it outside. In this brief moment, you were in contact, but he should rather it end as soon as possible, because really, this was very distasteful, and he didn’t feel anything toward you except the general knowledge it was his duty _not_ to kill you.

It was the impression across most of Ankh-Morpork, in those circles where they knew who Rufus Drumknott _was_ , that the young man was a sink of personality, and that he was rather like a blank slate, with no actual traits other than his loyalty to the Patrician.

There were one or two exceptions – on Whistler Street, in Dimwell, Rufus Drumknott would ever be Jasper and Miriam’s boy, who never rose too far above his station, and would always play you something on the piano at the Horse and Coaches when he was visiting that part of town. There, he was considered to be a quiet, but pleasant man, ever defined by how much he was taking after his mother these days. In various stationery circles, Drumknott was considered to be an authority, and a man of rapier wit[7]; to the engineers who worked the rail lines, Drumknott was a sensible lad, but a bit of a romantic. In the mind of Nobby Nobbs, whom Drumknott looked very ill upon, and who treated him with a great suspicion as a result of the man’s predilection for pick-pocketing, Drumknott was “ _effin’ scary, if you ask me, I don’t care how little he is **[8]**”_.

This was the nature of a man’s character. It never rested, fully-formed in every person’s mind, in precisely the same way. You knew what he showed you, and what he showed the people you knew, but unless you saw him in every moment, in every group of people, in every scenario, you never got the whole picture.

And Drumknott, a very private man, did not like to show people much.

The wizards at the Unseen University, it might be said, got a much fuller picture than most people did. They saw Drumknott on his days off, and many of them knew Drumknott from when he first began to visit the Unseen University at six or seven years old, so that he could sit in the Library instead of running around with the boys his age on the streets. They knew various things about Drumknott.

Ladislav Pelc, the Prehumous Professor of Morbid Bibliomancy, when drunk, would sometimes quietly relate the day when Drumknott, eight or nine years old, had come into the Library with a smile on his face. The boy had not been one prone to smiles, and Pelc had asked, good-naturedly, what had put him in such a good mood. The boy had cheerfully responded that his father had been murdered by a debt-collector earlier that morning, and had wandered into the stacks, unaccompanied[9], in search of a book about ornithology. Pelc was always very polite when he saw Mr Drumknott, and as far as Ponder was aware, Drumknott always sent Professor Pelc a card at Hogswatch.

When he was seventeen, a young Drumknott had broken the nose of a man who had been in the Library in the hopes of stealing a few valuable volumes to sell in the city itself. This show of rage had been prompted when the man had disparaged the Librarian, to whom Drumknott fostered a good deal of affection. The Librarian knew Drumknott best, and no one much liked to ask him questions about the clerk, if it could be avoided, because the Librarian had the terrible habit of answering them.

Ridcully _liked_ Drumknott, and for that matter, Drumknott liked _him_. This was a damning statement in itself.

And then there was the fact that Drumknott, despite his small stature, could be very… _stern_. He did not tell the students off, exactly, when he saw them mistreating a book, or noted that their robes were unironed. As a rule, Drumknott did not like to talk to the students at all, and had no small amount of distaste for them[10], but he had a certain way of _looking_ at them, his expression completely blank, that made them want to crawl back into their bodies and then run away, which was what they usually did, after putting the book down or straightening the robe in question. And the students weren’t even the half of it – neither Ponder nor Rincewind had ever seen Drumknott downstairs, with Room XB, but the books in the Library certain listened to him, and once, Rincewind had watched a wayward tomb on escapology fly reluctantly down into Drumknott’s hands when he had quietly ordered it to cease its nonsense and come down immediately. He had said to Rincewind, who had still been leaning on his net in the aftermath, that it was the same thing one did with badly behaved dogs, and that ultimately, one had only to employ the right tone of voice.

Most of the city viewed Drumknott’s expressionless silence as an absence of personality. Most of the wizards would tell you he was in possession of a great deal of personality, and they should rather avoid any contact with it, if it was all the same to you.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“I don’t need you to accompany me,” Drumknott said irritably. He had been forced to lie in his bed, awake, but hale and hearty, for _too_ _long_ before Lord Vetinari had permitted him to return to his work, and even then, Lord Vetinari had been… _Odd_. It had set his teeth on edge, that Lord Vetinari should be so stiff and quietly uncertain with him, should act like he was something _fragile_ , and contrasted, so much, with—

With the _dream_ , and _that_ Vetinari, who was…

Who was _absolutely_ not akin to the real one.

And now, and now, _this_. He hadn’t even been trusted to make the scarcely twenty minutes walk to the Unseen University alone – Vetinari had insisted one of the coachmen take him, and with Mr Lockheed in attendance.

Not even one of the _minor_ Dark Clerks, but _Mr Lockheed!_ Their _manager!_ It was— It was _foolish_ , and inefficient, and he felt so embarrassed he could scarcely stand it. And the Patrician, in his expected manner, had merely _ignored_ even the slightest sign of Drumknott’s irritation.

“With all due respect, Mr Drumknott,” Lockheed replied, his hands in his pockets as he idly followed Drumknott down the stairs, and into Room XB, “I absolutely do. You do what the Patrician says: I do what the Patrician says. We all do what the Patrician says. It’s just easier for us that way.”

“It’s _ridiculous_ ,” Drumknott muttered, with an – in Mr Lockheed’s humble opinion, which wasn’t especially humble, because he was one of those people who knew Mr Drumknott quite well, as far as he allowed himself to be known – uncharacteristic show of his temper. Lockheed liked Mr Drumknott. He could be a very dangerous man, when given the right motivation, and was thus a valuable member of the Palace staff, but ordinarily, one would never even _know_ he had a temper. Now, it showed through quite plainly. “It’s—”

“Excuse me? Mr Drumknott?”

Drumknott stopped on the stairs, and he and Lockheed both turned up to look at the figure of Ponder Stibbons. Mr Stibbons was a few years Mr Drumknott’s junior, and Lockheed somewhat hated to look at them side-by-side: both of them were slight, bespectacled men in clothes that made them look even smaller than they were, and while Drumknott’s face was rounder and redder than Mr Stibbons’, and although Ponder was a good deal taller, they did sometimes look like two very different versions of the same base product.

“Mr Stibbons,” Drumknott said, holding back some of his annoyance. Ponder’s heart was beating a mile a minute. He’d never seen Drumknott actually _annoyed_ before, not— Not at one of the _wizards_. Certainly, he’d snap at the students, but he was usually very respectful with members of the faculty, even Ponder, and now… He was being respectful, yes. He said _Mr_. But there was a quietly dangerous note to his voice that made Ponder want to go ask Hex what the worst way to be killed was, and if there was maybe a way to make Rufus Drumknott forget what it might be. “Might I _assist_ you?”

“Would you come with me up to the infirmary?” Ponder asked, and Drumknott stared at him, baffled. “The doctor is looking at one of our students, and he said that you might be connected, somehow?”

“I never talk to any of the students,” Drumknott said. He all but snapped it, actually, and Lockheed averted his eyes slightly. It felt quite improper to see Drumknott showing this much feeling if he wasn’t about to put it to use and kill someone, and he was fairly certain Mr Drumknott wasn’t about to start murdering wizards because of a bad mood.

“No, none of us do, if possible,” Ponder said, with a small smile. Drumknott did not return it, his stare boring into Ponder’s, and Ponder coughed into his hand. “Er, well, just— I can ask the Archchancellor to come down instead?”

It was never worth much, threatening Drumknott. Mr Lockheed knew this, and with his thin patience, Drumknott crossed his arms tightly over his chest, regarding Ponder with one eyebrow delicately arched, his expression otherwise entirely neutral. It was the sort of pose that made him look about three times taller than he actually was, and Lockheed watched in detached interest at the way Ponder, at least six inches taller than Drumknott, recoiled slightly.

Mr Lockheed had seen that expression, many times, on the face of the Patrician. He hated it when Drumknott did this. He did it so _easily_ , too – with enough time spent in the Patrician’s presence, he didn’t have any difficulty at all in picking up some of the man’s peculiarities, much like the Patrician himself could probably list off fifty types of paperclip without blinking.

Ponder recoiled slightly more under the hard stare.

“Please, Mr Stibbons, by _all means_ ,” Drumknott said, “do send down the Archchancellor.” A moment’s pause, and then he said – and of course he said this, Lockheed mused, because that was exactly like him, especially when he was in too irritable of a mood to restrain himself – “Don’t let me detain you.” And Ponder _ran_.

A few minutes later, as Drumknott sat down at the piano stool in Room XB, Rincewind _and_ Ponder Stibbons entered the file room. Ponder had run into him in the hallway, and not actually wanting to go to the Archchancellor and say, “Actually, sir, the clerk would like you to go down into the basement to talk with him rather than him coming up to you,” he thought – perhaps mistakenly – that Rincewind, an older wizard who was a good deal taller than Ponder, and was taller than most people, might be able to help.

Rincewind was a naturally cowardly wizard, and did not like signs of danger: subsequently, he jumped a good three feet in the air when he saw Mr Lockheed, a tall, strapping man with yellow-green eyes imparted with a kind of glow in the dim candlelight, standing beside the door. Lockheed laughed.

Drumknott turned his head very slowly to look at them, his expression sour, and Rincewind gulped. He had never seen Rufus Drumknott with an _expression_ on his face before. It was incredible, that such a little man could exude such an all-encompassing and quietly violent energy. He tried, for a moment, to imagine Twoflower being this terrifying. It didn’t work.

“ _Mr_ Rincewind?” Drumknott asked quietly, his soft voice ringing throughout the infinity of the file room. The file room vibrated with fascinated confusion, uncertain of all these new visitors at once, _especially_ of Mr Ponder Stibbons, who, being quite a young man, looked suspiciously like a student.

Rincewind was not used to being called _Mr_. His name was _Rincewind_ : that was the beginning and the end of it, and he didn’t much need a Mr on the beginning of it, especially because Drumknott was wielding the Mr in question as if it was a very, very sharp knife.

 “I, well,” Rincewind said, puffing out his chest, which didn’t amount to much, because his chest was rather thin, and no amount of puffing would render it impressive. “The Arch— Well, the infirmary, I mean, is… What we need is for you to come upstairs!”

He tried to say this with authority.

Authority, apparently, had no effect on Drumknott[11].

“ _Mr_ Rincewind,” Drumknott said softly. “Mr Stibbons. Is there a reason, perhaps, that you believe _my_ expertise crucial at this juncture?” Around them, Room XB shuddered meaningfully, and it made Rincewind flinch. Ponder, however, stopped short for a moment, frowning at the filing cabinets and at their candles in their stands, their wicks never burning down, their lights flickering.

“Doctor Lawn said—” Rincewind began, but Drumknott stood to his feet.

“Doctor Lawn?” he repeated quietly. “Very well.”

“Oh,” Rincewind said, astonished relief overtaking him, and he smiled. “I mean. Yes, of course, of course, you’ll come upstairs… Good. I expected that.” Drumknott arched an eyebrow at him, and Rincewind patted Ponder’s shoulder. “Come on!” he said hurriedly. “Up we go!”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Good afternoon, Archchancellor,” Drumknott said as he entered the room.

“Ah, Drumknott, there’s a good chap,” the Archchancellor said, gesturing for the clerk to come forward. He was flanked by an incredibly large, muscular man with eyes like a cat, who Ridcully gave a cheerful smile to, as well as, of course, by Ponder, and Rincewind, who they’d apparently picked up along the way.

The Archchancellor, of course, had _also_ accumulated more members of his party: the Bursar was perching precariously on the back of a chair, and the Lecturer in Recent Runes was examining Horace Dripp’s sleeping corpus in the most careful, critical way one could from a minimum distance of six to eight feet. The Senior Wrangler was standing at the Archchancellor’s shoulder.

“Doctor Lawn,” Drumknott said. “Gentlemen.”

“Do you know who this is?” the Archchancellor asked, and Drumknott’s reserved gaze flickered to the young man in the bed.

“Henry Whittle,” he answered.

“Aha,” Ponder said. “You _do_ know him.”

“Mr Stibbons, I know the name of every student at this university,” Drumknott said quietly. “This does not mean I socialize with them.”

“Every student?” Rincewind repeated, and he saw the Senior Wrangler flinch. Drumknott turned to look at him, but he did his best to stand his ground. He did tremble slightly, but this was a matter of course for Rincewind. “Name all the new students this year.”

Drumknott didn’t miss a beat. “Abbot, Haverford; Acton, Lot; Agrett, George; Artlather, Soap; Az—”

“Yes, yes, that’s enough,” Ridcully said, giving Rincewind an irritated look.

“He can probably name half the people in the _city_ ,” the Senior Wrangler said, giving Rincewind a significant look. “It’s his _job_.”

“Quite,” Drumknott said. “Henry Whittle, twenty-two, Level 2, from Sto Terens, I believe. And, of course, his everpresent companion, Mr Horace Dripp, twenty-three, Level 5. Ankh-Morpork stock, I am told.” Drumknott sounded somewhat doubtful as he said this, but added dispassionatedly, “Grew up by the riverside.”

“Level _5_?” repeated the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “He _isn’t_. He’s not got on a sash!”

“If Mr Drumknott says he’s a Level 5,” said the Senior Wrangler, as all of the wizards looked in no small amount of horror at Dripp, “he probably _is_.” In his sleep, Dripp snored, and a bubble of snot popped over his mouth.

“What level are _you_?” the Bursar asked Drumknott suspiciously.

“I’m not a wizard, Bursar,” Drumknott said. “I’m a clerk.”

“So? Answer the question!” Drumknott kept the Bursar’s gaze for a long moment, and then, like a bashful spider, the Bursar clambered from the high back of the chair and curled into a very tight ball upon its seat instead. Drumknott looked to Whittle.

“He’s asleep?” he asked Doctor Lawn.

“Yes,” Lawn said. “Can’t wake him at all. Was there anything— _Magical_ , er, about those dreams you said you were having?” All of the wizards looked to Drumknott, who did not show even the slightest hint of emotion.

“No magic to speak of,” Drumknott said, reaching into his pocket and delicately removing his handkerchief, which was dark blue, and embroidered with a neat, silver _R._ in the corner. He wrapped the handkerchief around his fingers. “My dreams are more vivid than usual, and of a strange lilt, but nothing extreme.”

“What are the dreams about?” Ridcully asked.

“There are not so different to my day-to-day life,” Drumknott said, stepping neatly around the bed, and approaching Dripp. He did not seem to show the expected horror of a man like Dripp. “Myself and Lord Vetinari working, for the most part. There are one or two more unusual interludes… Other figures who appear. We work in a library instead of the Patrician’s Palace.”

With his fingers safely wrapped in cloth, he nudged Dripp in the shoulder, and stepped nimbly out of his path as the young wizard sneezed violently. Everyone in the room, barring Mr Lockheed, who was well-accustomed with Drumknott’s speed on his feet, and Lawn and Ridcully, who both considered Drumknott to be a fast little bastard[12], became suddenly aware of _exactly_ how realistic it was to believe Drumknott could go toe-to-toe with an Assassin, if he could move that fast. It was like watching a shadow disappear as the light went out, it was so inhumanly rapid.

“Mr Dripp,” Drumknott said delicately. “You and Mr Whittle share a bedroom, do you not?”

“Huh? Oh, Mr Drumknott!” Dripp said, and quivered in a way that made many hanging thicknesses of mucous wobble. Drumknott did not seem deterred, but the Lecturer in Recent Runes turned slightly green, and turned his face away. Mr Dripp had not ever spoken to Drumknott before, but he had been glared at by him many, many times, and had cultivated a personal horror of the little clerk’s person. “Er— I, uh—”

“You and Mr Whittle share a bedroom,” Drumknott said. It was a statement: it brooked no conversation. “Has he mentioned strange dreams as of late?”

“Strange dreams?” Dripp asked, and he looked to Whittle on the bed. He looked quite pathetic, as a dog without its master, his greasy hands dolefully folded in his lap. “No, no, I don’t think so. Henry doesn’t usually dream. He’d have mentioned, if he did.”

“A coincidence, then,” Lawn said.

“If my work with the Patrician has taught me anything, Doctor Lawn,” Drumknott said softly, “it is that coincidence is nothing more than the desperate wish of the hopeful. Mr Dripp, where do you and Mr Whittle spend your time in the university?”

“Er, er, well,” Dripp said. “We… We go to lectures, and seminars.” The room regarded him with no small amount of disbelief.

“What,” the Senior Wrangler asked, seeming fascinated, in the way one asks a serial self-immolator why he does it, “just the two of you?”

“Yes,” Dripp said morosely. “Sometimes even the professor doesn’t show, but we go.”

“Very good,” Drumknott said, with a tone of some approval, and the wizards gave him an equally horrified look. “And where else? To the food hall, of course… You spend time in the Library?”

“Yes, of course,” Dripp said, sniffling. It made a quiet popping sound.

“And do you go into the city?”

“Oh, no,” Dripp said, shaking his head. “Not if we can help it.”

“Do you explore anywhere on campus?”

Dripp’s thickly-crusted eyes squinted slightly, with an audible crackling of noise. Ponder put his fingers in his ears until it stopped. Like the Lecturer in Recent Runes, he had turned a grey-green colour. “Er… No.”

“Do you know what happened to the last man that lied to me, Mr Dripp?” Drumknott asked softly, in a deceptively friendly voice. The room collectively held their breath as Drumknott leaned down slightly, so that he could look directly into Dripp’s half-shut eyes. Not many people looked Dripp in the face, and Dripp trembled visibly.

“Er— N— No?”

“Would you like to?”

“N… No?”

“No, you don’t,” Drumknott agreed in a warm tone, wearing a sweet smile that looked distinctly out of place on his usually expressionless features. In the background, grinning slightly, Lockheed looked at the expressions of mixed horror on the wizards’ faces, and even on the concerned face of Doctor Lawn. “So _do_ tell me what you’re missing out.”

“We got drunk,” Dripp said.

“Oh?”

“We went downstairs.”

“Yes?”

“Into a file room.”

Drumknott blinked. “Room XB?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Y— Yes,” Dripp said, coughing into his sleeve. Drumknott leaned slightly away. “He— We… We didn’t _do_ anything,” he said hurriedly, looking miserably between everyone else. “We just walked in, and—”

Drumknott held up his hand in a gesture for silence, and Dripp trailed wetly off. It was not, some of the wizards were surprised to see, the soft, delicate palm one would expect of a clerk. There was a visible scar, burned shiny in a line down one edge, and little pockmarks and callouses were scattered over the flesh. Dripp gulped.

“Pray, Mr Dripp,” Drumknott said. “Do allow me to guess. You went into Room XB, quite drunk, and Mr Whittle sat down at the piano… Perhaps he played the opening chords of a song, something bawdy, perhaps _The Hedgehog Song_?” Seeming to read his answer in Dripp’s guilty, soggy features, he said, in a long-suffering tone, “ _A Wizard’s Staff_?”

Miserably, Dripp nodded, and dripped in the process.

“Did you open one of the filing cabinets?” Drumknott asked.

“Yes,” Dripp said. “But I only— We didn’t mean to _take_ it, it was just that the room got all fussy and it flared the candles, and it made a noise like thunder, so we ran, and we only realized we still had it when we—”

Ridcully groaned, slapping one great hand to the side of his great, shaggy head. “That blasted _file_ the Librarian had! And it turned up on my desk, oh _damn_ it all, Dripp, what did you _do_ with it?”

Dripp gulped again.

“What _did_ you do with it?” Drumknott asked quietly. Dripp stared down at the tiled floor.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Well, the best we can figure,” Ponder Stibbons was explaining, as Ridcully sat in the chair across from the Patrician’s desk and drank heavily from a glass, “is that the room forms some sort of psychic connection with those that sit down at the piano. In order to communicate its, ah, its… Its _displeasure_ , that is to say, with the absence of one of its files, it’s manipulating this psychic connection to provoke positive or negative effects in Mr Drumknott and in Mr Whittle, but of course, the brain is most receptive to psychotropic messaging when the person is unconscious, so that it can use dreamscapes and the like. Er, so… Yes.”

“And your solution?” the Patrician asked.

“Ah,” Ponder said. “Well. That is to say…”

“You do not have a solution,” the Patrician said.

“No,” Ponder agreed. “But— But we _think_ the solution, er, _will_ be to return the file.”

“And where is the file?”

“We don’t know.”

“Where are you going to look for the file?”

“We don’t know.”

The Patrician pressed his thin lips together, and looked between Ponder and Ridcully expectantly. “Is there anything you _do_ know?” he asked.

“It probably isn’t harmful,” Ponder said. “Or at least, not to Mr Drumknott. Room XB likes him an awful lot. And there might be, er, a clue, uh, _to_ the file, based on the dreams he’s having, so we could just… Go through the dreams. If we used the omniscope, we could probably replay them, so that we could all see them.”

Vetinari, Ponder, and Ridcully looked back to Drumknott, who was standing back against one of the walls. His skin had turned a very chalky white.

“No,” he said quietly.

“No?” Ponder repeated, baffled.

“No,” he repeated. “I do _not_ believe, Mr Stibbons, that that will be necessary. I should be happy to write down and report on _relevant_ elements of the dreams I am experiencing, but I do not feel it would be… I do value, on some level, the privacy of my own _head_.”

“Very well,” Vetinari says quietly. “Morning reports on aspects of the dream that seem as if they might communicate something useful. Will that be quite sufficient for your purposes, Mr Stibbons[13]?”

“Er, yes,” Ponder said, with the uncanny sensation that his lines had been written for him.

Ridcully downed the rest of the glass. He didn’t mind _proper_ magical interludes, with explosions or big balls of energy or city-eggs or any of that, but this sort of thing was… _beyond_ him. All in the mind, all as if it wasn’t quite real, not quite tangible. If it couldn’t be shot at, shouted at, or otherwise blown to smithereens, he felt it was rather an unfair problem to be saddled with.

“They’re not— _upsetting_ , are they?” the Archchancellor asked. “Not nightmares?”

“No, Archchancellor,” Drumknott answered. He was still rather pale. “Merely… Vivid dreams. A stranger world. That is all.”

“Hmm,” the Archchancellor hummed, looking thoughtful, and Drumknott looked to Vetinari.

Vetinari inhaled, and then he spread his hands slightly. “Very well,” he said quietly. “Do work with what alacrity you can, Mr Stibbons. Mr Drumknott, when will you have your first report ready?”

“I can send it along to you this evening,” Drumknott said. After the wizards left, he was worried that Vetinari would ask.

He didn’t, and Drumknott thanked his lucky stars.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Rufus shifted slightly in his sleep. According to the clock on the wall, it was a little past four o’clock in the afternoon, and he yawned, turning to lie on his back. He was, he was dimly aware, mostly undressed, and was clad only in his dressing gown, although Havelock had thrown a blanket over his feet.

“Good God,” he said. Havelock moved his book, which was about the Bletchley Circle, away from his face slightly, and he looked down at Rufus, his lips twisted into a slight smirk.

“Ah, I see you join us in the land of the living once more, light of my life,” he murmured, and Drumknott focused on not flinching or jumping out of the position as Vetinari curled his fingers affectionately in Drumknott’s hair. He racked his dream-self’s mind for information, and found, to his surprise, that it flowed quite easily.

Vetinari had… _done that_ , to him, upstairs. He’d been… He’d been quite weak at the knees, afterwards, had not been able to move, and Vetinari had gone to answer the door: the groceries had arrived, and Drumknott had rushed downstairs not yet dressed, so that he wouldn’t unpack the boxes by himself. His leg was worse, in the dreams, he thought, much worse – he couldn’t carry things without it hurting, couldn’t put too much pressure on it for too long a period.

It hurt all the time, he said. Always, at least a little.

But no, no, not useful, _today_ , what had they done? They’d unpacked the groceries, yes, put away all manner of vegetables, and various cheeses, mushrooms, things in paper bags, glass jars… And Drumknott had leaned over the table, and Vetinari had come up behind him—

Oh.

Yes.

That had been at around eight o’clock, and, Drumknott is distantly aware, he doesn’t believe they did anything _else_ until it was past twelve. His thighs, he realized, _ached,_ as if he’d run for quite a long distance, and he felt strangely _open_ , his body loose and relaxed. “Marathon sex,” the strange dream vocabulary supplied for him, and Vetinari arched an eyebrow, seeming amused.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I suppose one might call it that.”

“You’re _smug_ ,” Drumknott said. He had to keep himself from squirming in his place as Vetinari’s smirk deepened. This was… How could _this_ be a communication from Room XB? What was this meant to be communicate to him?

“Wouldn’t you be?” Vetinari asked.

“Doesn’t your leg hurt?” Drumknott asked, and then realized he was lying on it. He sat up, glancing at the thigh in question, but Vetinari shook his head slightly, reaching out and cupping his cheek. Drumknott inhaled softly. He needed to act… He needed to _relax_ , he thought. Discover what precisely this dreamworld was meant to show him, what…

“No more than usual,” Vetinari murmured. “I’ve told you before not to worry about it, besides, you were keeping it warm. _You_ were quite tired, though.”

“You don’t need to sound so pleased with yourself,” Drumknott said, hoping this was the correct thing to say.

Vetinari smiled, showing his teeth, and Drumknott felt himself shiver. “Yes, I do,” he countered, marking his page and setting the book beside the sofa. It was significant, Drumknott supposed, that the dreams were occurring in the same continuity, back-to-back… Drumknott whimpered out a noise as Vetinari’s fingers slid under the surface of his dressing down, playing warm over his chest and down toward his belly. Drumknott could _feel_ the exhaustion in his body, felt the way his thighs gave warning twinges, but even still, he could feel blood flushing downward, and—

Was this how the Drumknott in the dream lived his _life_? Was this just a regular Saturday? The thought was _mad_ to him, and he shivered as Vetinari’s thumb danced over one of his nipples. “Aren’t you _tired_?” he asked in a strangled voice.

“No,” Vetinari purred, his teeth dragging over the shell of Drumknott’s ear. “Not especially. Why, are you? Rufus, my only one, you’ve been asleep for _hours_.”

“Yes, but we— We did _that_ for hours too, and I—” Drumknott gasped out a noise.

“So _responsive_ ,” Vetinari purred in his ear. Drumknott could feel his heart pounding, and he swallowed hard. No. No, he really _couldn’t_ think of any communication that could be put across in _this_ —

There was a bell from the other room, and Drumknott heard Vetinari sigh.

“One moment,” he murmured, and Drumknott let himself drop onto his back as Vetinari left the room. He heard the front door open, heard him say thank you… He returned with a parcel, which he set down on the table.

“Is that for you or for me?” Drumknott asked.

“I believe,” Vetinari said, “it is our wedding album. _So_ good of Margolotta to return it. No doubt there is another note within, beseeching us that we post our precious photographs online instead of being _Luddites_ about it.” There were several strange things in what Vetinari had said. _Online_ triggered uncomfortable emotions, feelings about _security_ , and _privacy_ ; Luddite, the Luddite Rebellion in 1811—

 _Morpheus_.

Greek god of dreams. _Greek_. There was no Greece on the Discworld, but this wasn’t the Discworld: this was Earth, this was _London_.

And none of that was even the most surprising part.

“Wedding album,” Drumknott parroted uncomprehendingly, and he stared at the silver band on Vetinari’s finger, beside the black signet ring. On his own hand, although he did not wear jewellery in real life, there was a matching band of the same shimmering colour. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“You’ve been complaining about it for the past two weeks,” Vetinari said, giving him a strange look, and Drumknott is forced to think quickly.

“That was before we had sex for four hours,” he said.

Vetinari’s concern evaporated, and he gripped Drumknott by the hair, drawing him up closer, so that their chests were flush against one another. Drumknott inhaled. He is taken away, for a moment, at the horrible thought of this moment being broadcast on an omniscope, for a group of wizards to peruse and examine…

“I really don’t think I can go again,” Drumknott said weakly.

“You don’t want to even _try_?” Vetinari asked, his tone playful as he arched an eyebrow, and Drumknott, powerless, fell a little more against his chest. Vetinari’s arm was drawn tight about his waist, and it felt—

Drumknott had had sex before. _Several_ times, here and there, and it had been _good_. He’d enjoyed it, even with the clumsier of the men he’d taken up with, even with the more selfish ones, and yet… This was different. This wasn’t the relation between two men, exploring one another’s bodies – this Vetinari _knew_ his body, Drumknott was certain, had been made all too certain in the _last_ dream. His hands, his lips, his tongue, had run over Drumknott’s body as it might over one of the walls in the Palace, flicking open hidden compartments Drumknott never knew were there and flooding his body with pleasure.

It was _practised_. It was—

The sort of thing he’d never dreamed of experiencing, not with anybody. Not even in dreams.

“I want to try,” he said, and he pulled Vetinari, this Vetinari, this Drumknott’s _husband_ , down into a kiss.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Henry shifted in bed, wiping at his eyes and yawning, and he glanced at the clock. It was a Saturday afternoon, and they’d gone back to bed for a few hours. Horace had been working on his lab reports, and Henry had been making incredibly slow progress on an essay about the Luddites, which, frankly, may well be the death of him.

He glanced at Horace, who was where he always was, curled awkwardly between Henry’s legs, his face mashed against his chest. They’d _meant_ to have sex, he dimly recalled, but once they’d actually lain down, the intention had sort of fizzled out, and they’d just clung to each other in the wonderful warmth of the bed…

The flash of sleepy dream-awareness came to Henry in much the same way it had Drumknott. It was abrupt, and sudden, and he stared uncomprehendingly around the room. It was not at all like the room he and Dripp shared at the university. At UU, they had two beds, although they only used one – the other served as a sort of shelf for various books and laundry, and occasionally as a seat. Here, there was one big double bed that dominated the room, and there were other things in the room, too – bookshelves crammed tightly with volumes, two chests of drawers, a baffling object that was a sort of black-backed mirror, resting on a grey stand, and there were posters on the walls.

Neither Henry nor Dripp had posters in their room, but here, there were posters, alright: one of them was a poster of a great wizard with long grey hair, smoking a long-handled pipe…

Henry looked down at the unfamiliar man asleep on his chest, like Dripp slept. This was a dream, he knew, but it was odd, he thought, to have a funny man like _this_ on his chest. He was… He was odd-looking.

He had dirty-blond hair that was quite long, and was loosely tied in a ponytail at the back of his neck. His skin was pale, but marked over with freckles, and on the square point of his stubby nose, which hooked just slightly, the freckles formed a constellation. He did not have a proper beard, but had a moustache and a messy goatee, which was tickling Henry’s chest – he was used to Dripp’s beard, but this was _different_. The hair was… He wasn’t _handsome_. Henry wasn’t really sure what handsome looked like, exactly, but he was fairly certain it didn’t look at like this. With that said, it wasn’t unpleasant, and the man was warm.

He had big ears, Henry noticed. Big, protuberant ears that looked like they should be caked with wax. His nose, which was running slightly, looked…

“ _Dripp_?”

Not-Dripp’s eyes opened, and he looked up at Henry with eerily familiar, sleepy incomprehension. His eyes, which were no more crusted and thick than any other man’s eyes, were the colour of mercury, a sort of silvery grey with flecks of white, and they were astonishing.

“Hm?” he asked. “What time’s it?”

Henry stared at him, uncomprehending, and let his head fall back on the pillow. Shrugging two bony shoulders, not-Dripp curled back into him, and Henry stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling, trying to figure out exactly what was going wrong with his life.

It was hard being a wizard, sometimes.

 

[1] Not all dwarf names translate well into Morporkian. This one, unfortunately for Irritable, translated quite well.

[2] Henry had a bad left arm due to an incident in his youth that had involved a cart house, a violent goose, a length of rope, and a lamp post. He did not like to talk about it. No one had ever asked about it, except Dripp, who he had immediately told the whole story to.

[3] This was also related to the emptiness of his bed, although Ridcully had drunk himself through the worst of the related upset while looking mournfully at a map of the Ramtops.

[4] Read: _the_ only.

[5] It wasn’t that Mossy Lawn hadn’t heard that sort of thing _before_. He’d just never heard it in the Patrician’s office, and from the Patrician’s _clerk,_ who by all accounts, was one of the most boring young men alive, and in Lawn’s own experience, was stubborn, but _prim_.

[6] Innumerable are the occasions in which Doctor Lawn has removed crossbow bolts, traps, pins, and other sharp implements from the surprisingly hardwearing body of Mustrum Ridcully.

[7] The bar is admittedly somewhat low, and Drumknott’s standing was somewhat reduced in that he did not consider all puns equally funny.

[8] The fact that even at 5’4”, Drumknott was over a foot taller than Nobby, always seemed to elude him.

[9] Most of the students would not wander the stacks without a buddy nearby, and often left instructions as to where to go searching for him in the event he went missing. This was because the library’s stacks, which were quite infinite and magically charged, could often leave one disoriented and distracted. Drumknott, even as a young boy, rather lacked such exploitable traits as “curiosity” and “whimsy”, believing it was only sensible for him to know what he _ought_ to know. This meant he rarely lost his way by wandering off his beaten track.

[10] Drumknott was of the curious and unusual belief that one’s time in university ought be spent only in studying, writing, studying, studying, and studying some more. He felt many of the wizards acted quite inappropriately in wasting their time on “having fun” or the like, when they could be advancing their education.

[11] This was not at all true. The simple fact of the matter, however, was that Drumknott answered, at his core, to precisely _one_ authority, and he was currently walking his dog in the Palace gardens.

[12] This was, in two out of three aspects, quite true.

[13] Translated: _That will be quite sufficient for your purposes, Mr Stibbons_.


	4. Chapter 4

Vetinari leaned back, and he examined his original of Drumknott’s report, his gaze flickering over it with critical concentration, taking in his clerk’s neat, square handwriting. Drumknott’s handwriting, methodical and ordinarily neatly printed[1], was a work of some art: every single letter was sized perfectly, that one might measure them with a ruler and find them perfectly in proportion, and if one looked at an “A” on one page, one could look at another page of Drumknott’s handwriting, from weeks ago, and see precisely the same “A” in situ. His handwriting gave the impression of a young man who, having decided his letters all must look a certain way, had drawn a grid of how they _ought_ to look, practised them until this was how he wrote them. His handwriting gave this impression, of course, because that was precisely what he had done, and it reminded Vetinari of the clever work of the printing presses, likely chuffing along now in the city proper. Efficient, mechanical, and _quite perfect_.

Drumknott’s shorthand, even, followed his rigorous code of expectations, and Vetinari rather liked the look of that, too[2].

_Initial Dreams (occurred from Tues 1 st March to Fri 4th March)_

  * _Characterised by a slow waking. Without proper awareness of wakefulness, and yet with a sense I was well-rested._
  * _Seemed to feel there was the figure of a man in the bed beside me, that we might sleep side-by-side. In waking moments, I was aware of a sense of domestic familiarity to which I am not accustomed. In dream states, I knew this man very well, although his familiarity faded when I woke properly._
  * _Occasionally, he would speak, but none of these words were noteworthy – merely quiet platitudes, encouraging me to rise and start the day, etc._
  * _First noted the figure “Morpheus” – in these dreams, a figure of dreams and sleep, a god. Not one that manifested itself, but merely a mention of him, in the same way one might reference a literary character in casual conversation._



Vetinari reached up, absently drawing his fingers over the side of his beard, and feeling the stiff, cropped-short bristles under his touch. He hadn’t mentioned that, before. That he felt there was a figure in bed with him. _Domestic familiarity_ , Vetinari mused, but of course, that _wasn’t_ something Drumknott knew – that was, like as not, something he _won’t_ know, until after Vetinari has died, and if he goes on, then, to serve the next Patrician, he probably won’t at all.

It invoked him a curious emotion, a general sense of distant melancholy. He knew why _he_ pursued his work, but there was no reason for Drumknott to be quite so focused upon his work in quite the same way, no reason…

And yet, of course, the reason was as simple as Vetinari’s own: pure duty, and loyalty to Ankh-Morpork. He could hardly fault Drumknott for the faults he had himself.

_Dream Proper #1 (Sat 5 th March)_

  * _Was working in a library with arched ceiling. Not The Library – another library, away from Ankh-Morpork. It was raining heavily, and I noted that the guttering on the outside of the building would need to be repaired soon._
  * _I had books to reshelve: what I thought of as “large-print” novels, wherein size of print was larger than ordinary to allow better ease for readers with lacking vision. One of these books was by an author named Sue Grafton, and was entitled ‘A is for Alibi’, with another being named ‘B is for Burglar’. It was a “crime thriller”._
  * _I turned and saw, in the dream, my co-worker, Havelock Vetinari. He was the head librarian, and had a small badge affixed to his suit jacket to display this fact to others. He looked much the same as his lordship, the Patrician, albeit in a different wardrobe (see etching #1 **[3]**)._
  * _Mr Vetinari said to me he planned to murder the in-dream Sam Vimes (a joke). When I inquired as to why, he said that Mr Vimes had employed he and I to open a community centre on nearby Treacle Street._
  * _Mr Vetinari then informed me “Esmerelda,” a woman with whom we were each presumably acquainted, was going to visit soon. He referred to her as “the wicked witch of Kings Longsley,” and when I demurred, noting that my own aunt was a witch, and I disliked to hear them spoken of with scorn, Mr Vetinari looked to me with confusion._
  * _Lord Vetinari is aware of my relation; Mr Vetinari seemed very surprised that I had such a relative, although it seemed to me we had a comfortable professional relationship, and I was surprised that he did not know in-dream._



Drumknott _did_ , of course, have a witch for an aunt.

She had died a few years ago, if Vetinari recalls, inhabiting one of the smaller villages on the other side of the Sto Plains, and she used to send Drumknott small parcels and the like, when she felt they would make them her way. It had been her, he had noted, who had taught him much of what he knows about retaining a cool head under pressure, and he had looked on her quite fondly.

 _Vetinari_ had no especial concern as to witches. He preferred them, he expected, to wizards, although magic as a whole, he was no great lover of, and yet… _Esmerelda_. The name rings no bell in his own head, none that he can recall, but perhaps one of the wizards will make note of it[4].

_Dream Proper #2 (Sun 6 th March)_

  * _In-dream, I was working in the library, bent over a machine called a “computer”, which housed many of the library’s records, and my shoulders ached. The hour was late, and the library was close to closing, or closed. I was looking on the computer for a file that had gone missing, and was unsuccessful, increasingly distracted by my pain._
  * _This was as a result of my lifting a heavy box earlier in the day, drawing complaint from the wound through my shoulder, which I also possess in my real life. This wound I received from Messrs Pin and Tulip some years ago, and yet in-dream, I was perplexed by these sobriquets, as they seemed to fit ill with my hazy recollection of events._
  * _Nonetheless, the wound was in the same place, and seemed to have been inflicted by a knife of similar size and width. My dream-self recalled waking in a hospital, wherein Mr Vetinari and Commander Vimes, also a policeman in the dream, although in a black cloth uniform (see etching #2 **[5]**) as opposed to his plate. _
  * _A man came up behind me, and he began to rub my shoulders. This man was the man with whom I had woken in bed in my initial dreams, and again, I felt a strange sense of familiar intimacy with him._
  * _I voiced my concern that someone in the library might see us being overly familiar, as he was another co-worker: he said that Mr Lockheed, the in-dream security guard, and in real life, one of our senior clerks, was not yet at work, and that Mr Vetinari and someone named “Agnes”, a junior librarian, had already made their respective ways home. He then said we ought go home ourselves._
  * _We left the library arm-in-arm, locking it behind us, and in the street, met Mr Moist von Lipwig, in-dream the postmaster of the local post office, and his wife, Mrs Adora Belle Dearheart. We were, apparently, on first-name terms with them._
  * _Mention was also made of Sybil Vimes, who, in-dream, apparently raises snakes and reptiles. Lady Sybil, in reality, breeds swamp dragons._
  * _Mr Lipwig and Mrs Dearheart were also invited to the opening of the community centre, and they and my companion discussed the nature of the community centre that had been mentioned in Dream #1._
  * _We rode some sort of underground train toward our home._



A… _man_.

Drumknott didn’t name him, and Vetinari sincerely doubted it was because Drumknott didn’t _know_ the young man’s name. Doubtless, judging by the way he had paled when the wizards had suggested peering into his head, it was someone he knew in this world too, like in the dream world – it was likely, then, to be one of the wizards. Perhaps Mr Stibbons himself: Drumknott’s colour _had_ been distinctly chalky, and the embarrassment would have been somewhat severe, Vetinari imagined.

It wasn’t… _Jealousy_ , that bubbled in Vetinari’s chest.

That would be too vibrant an emotion, too deeply felt, although he did indeed feel _something_ as he looked down at the page, glancing between the notes and Drumknott’s rough, sketched ideas of the clothes he could recall from memory. And yet the idea lingered in his mind, a man massaging Drumknott’s shoulders, walking arm-in-arm down a street with him.

_Dream Proper #3 (Mon 7 th March)_

  * _Woke up in-dream. Walked downstairs to see partner playing song on piano. ‘Slow Train’, originally by musicians Flanders & Swann. The song concerned train stations that had closed down, and within the dream, I was very familiar with it. Note was made that he and I were “vegetarian” – we did not eat meat, and only rarely ate fish._
  * _Note made that he and I socialized regularly with Sybil and Sam Vimes, inviting them for dinner, and playing a card game called “bridge”._
  * _We ate breakfast. It was normal by own standards: muesli with milk and fruit. He ate an egg._
  * _We did the crossword, but he was surprised by the speed with which I accomplished it, used instead to the much more difficult crosswords of the Ankh-Morpork Times, and to completing the crossword as fast as possible. He expressed bafflement that I should manage it so easily, and I felt disoriented and confused._
  * _I woke with a headache._



_Here I would note that my sleep had been somewhat interrupted in the night, and I had tossed and turned somewhat, waking several times; before now, my usual sleep schedule had been offset, but not to such an extent that I was concerned._

_Dream Proper #4 (Tues 8 th March, fainted on stairs and was impossible to wake)_

  * _Was in bed with partner. No salient details._



Vetinari stared down at this line of perfectly-printed text.

 _No salient details_.

He remembered the ragged scream, and he had heard Drumknott hurriedly hiss to Doctor Lawn precisely what had occurred, Drumknott changing his trousers. Judging by the way he’d mentioned the crossword pun, it had been—

 _Demonstrated_ to him.

Vetinari allowed himself precisely thirty seconds to consider this[6]. Drumknott, his personal clerk, sitting down, or perhaps sprawled on a bed, his partner in between his legs. His thighs, slightly more muscled, and certainly more plump, than one might expect spread wide, his hands knotted in the sheets beneath him, his head back. A ragged scream escaping his throat, as, indeed, it had.

He set Drumknott’s notes down.

It was time to retire to bed.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“What’s in the files?” Rincewind asked, and Drumknott didn’t immediately answer.

Drumknott did not seem, as many of the wizards had expected to be, _uncomfortable_ in the Wizards’ Council. In fact, he seemed rather comfortable in the Uncommon Room, his fingers loosely clasped over the back of his seat instead of sitting down, so that everyone could see him. He seemed very comfortable with leading a meeting, and this was because he was: since the butler of the Palace, Stebbins, had died a few years into his service as Vetinari’s personal clerk, he commanded all of the Palace’s household staff, as well as having some managerial command over the Palace Clerks Office. Indeed, most of the Dark Clerks would obey his orders, too, although they didn’t _have_ to, and one often found oneself following Mr Drumknott’s orders without even thinking about them. They were ordinarily offered so quietly and so unobtrusively, their appearance so obvious, that one almost took them to account as one’s own decision.

Perhaps surprisingly, for someone who was not a member of the faculty at the Unseen University, Ridcully _let_ him lead the meeting, but Ridcully often let someone else lead the meetings – it meant he only had to listen to the important bits, of which there were usually very few, and besides, Ridcully trusted Drumknott’s judgement, as a rule, although he did think him something of a pansy at times.

They all _knew_ him, of course, by sight, even if they’d never spoken to him: Rufus Drumknott was as much a fact of UU’s hallowed halls as much as one of the students. Well. _More_ than the students. Drumknott had a sort of consistency: naturally, the students, being students, didn’t even have a regular _physical_ consistency, let alone one of their schedules.

He looked to Professor Hoo.

Professor Hoo, who was holding a glass of (on the) rocks[7] to the side of his head, said, “Er. Well. It isn’t… It isn’t classified, exactly.”

“Well?” Rincewind prompted.

“Unlikely incidences are recorded in Room XB,” Drumknott said quietly. “The difference between these unlikely incidences, and those recorded in the other file rooms, is that these unlikely incidences ordinarily concern themselves with other universes, or realms. That’s why one needs to forge a psychic connection with the room, I expect, to read the files. Without that connection having been made, the texts, written as they are in their original languages, are utterly illegible.”

“Yes,” Hoo said. “I…” He trailed off, looking a bit green as he cleared his throat, and then said, “Er, apparently we have copies of some of the files from Dis and Pandemonium.”

“Demons keep scrupulous records,” Drumknott said knowledgably, with some approval, in a way that made Doctor Hix smile absently, and that made many of the wizards shift uncomfortably in their seats. One or two of them crossed and uncrossed their legs, or crossed their arms over their chests: the idea of Mr Drumknott being in contact with, or even helping, some of the untold hordes of the dark dimensions, was startlingly realistic. They’d probably ask him for help with their referencing systems.

“Yes,” Hoo said, looking rather sick. “They… They write _everything_ down.”

“But this isn’t demons,” Drumknott said, and he reached up, touching the side of his own head.

“Do you want something to drink?” Ponder Stibbons asked, but Drumknott merely shook his head, his eyes closing for a moment.

“It’s a different world,” Drumknott said, eyes still closed. He wasn’t uncomfortable with magic, that much was true – ordinarily, if Drumknott saw a flying book or a fireball, he stepped neatly out of the way, or asked very tersely what it was supposed to be doing, and why it wasn’t doing that, instead of faffing about in the corridor. This was more than he did for the students, of course, who he just glared at until they went away again. He didn’t _like_ magic, he said, but he seemed to have more of an understanding of it than most of the average citizens of Ankh-Morpork. “It’s called Earth. It isn’t… It isn’t a disc. It’s a sort of globe.”

“A globe?” repeated the Senior Wrangler, scoffing. “Nonsense. If it was a globe, everyone would be falling off the edges.”

“No,” Drumknott said firmly. His eyes were tightly closed, and he looked rather pale. “No, owing to the planet’s mass, it exerts a gravitational force of everything on the planet’s surface. There’s a sort of… There’s an atmosphere around the whole thing, like a soap bubble about a soap bubble.”

“A soap bubble?” the Senior Wrangler repeated.

Already sensing the direction this was going in, as most of the wizards understood metaphors and similes, but liked to pretend they didn’t like to, Rincewind said, “Is there a file on it in Room XB?”

“I’m sure there _was_ ,” Drumknott said. His eyes opened, and he met Rincewind’s gaze, his expression serious. “Although where it is _now_ …”

“They’ve looked through all the rubbish,” Ponder said, “and Modo says there’s no sign of any files. It’s probably… The Librarian said he had it in the Library, and then it appeared on the Archchancellor’s desk, so the University must be moving it, somehow.”

“Oh, good,” Rincewind said, lowly and sardonically. “Well, so long as we can trust the _University_ to look after it.”

“How is Mr Whittle?” Drumknott asked.

“He’s, er, well,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, looking very thoughtful. He had spent quite a lot of time keeping an eye on Henry Whittle, by which of course we mean that he had spent no time observing Whittle at all, and had instead observed Dripp. Dripp, who apparently went to his classes (the boy was mad!) and who was apparently a Level 5 wizard, somehow, just wouldn’t leave Whittle’s side. He had spent the past night sleeping in the chair beside Whittle, and when the other man had shown no sign of waking, had gone to collect his books, and just begun pursuing his usual studies in close proximity to Whittle’s bed. Occasionally, he would read aloud from his books to Whittle, or look at the Lecturer in Recent Runes, and ask awkwardly if there was anything he could do to help him, as he just kept _staring_ , and the Lecturer in Recent Words had repeatedly said “no”. “He’s alright. He just seems like he’s sleeping, just sleeping. Sometimes he moves a little in his sleep, but that’s all. Except for that no one can wake him up, he seems just fine.”

Ponder Stibbons looked down at the notes that Drumknott had brought in this morning.

_Dream Proper #4 (Wed 9 th March)_

  * _In-dream, groceries were delivered to the home at 7am or so._
  * _No salient details until later in afternoon._
  * _Partner was reading a book about something called the “Bletchley Circle,” a ring of spies. Our wedding album (wedding had occurred some years previous?) was returned by a friend, Margolotta (presumably the in-dream equivalent of the Lady Margolotta von Überwald)._
  * _Terms of note: Luddite (Luddite rebellion of 1811); “online”; “photographs” instead of iconographs; Morpheus, it was noted, was a Greek god of dreams. There is no Greece on the Disc: I noted I was on Earth, in a city named London._



“Is this everything?” Ponder asked, looking back to Drumknott. “Do you know what your, um, your husband’s name is?”

Drumknott met his gaze. Despite saying _nothing_ , Ponder was acutely aware that _were_ he to be addressed, he’d be addressed – in Mr Drumknott’s uniquely icy tones – as _Mr_ Stibbons. Stibbons swallowed.

“Mr Drumknott, we can only help you if you—”

“I am supplying all of the information relevant,” Drumknott said quietly, gesturing to the pages. “You know some details about the universe in question. The personal nature of my dream equivalent’s relationships hardly seem relevant.”

“Are you still Rufus Drumknott, in the dreams?”

“I believe so.”

“And is it… Is it normal, in this universe, er, for men to marry one another?”

Drumknott seemed to consider the question for a moment. Many of the wizards coughed and stirred in their seats, albeit for a different reason than before: wizards are aware when they _become_ wizards that celibacy is a requirement, and there are, without a doubt, many wizards that make use of the ban on interactions with women in order to interact, without scrutiny, with men. The wizards in this room were each aware that such wizards existed[8], but in the wider city, it was very much something to keep behind closed doors, or behind the bead curtains of certain establishments on Lurkers Lane[9].

“I think so,” he says finally. “It may not be as common as the alternative – I believe I recall various implications of the rarity in it, in terms of workplace diversity. But it was… _legal_. There was a significant celebration, I believe.”

“Right,” Ponder said. Drumknott had an odd look on his face, like his mask was frozen slightly, and none of the wizards really knew what to say.

“If that is all,” Drumknott said quietly, leaning to pick up his briefcase. “I shall take my leave.”

“Keep in touch, lad,” Ridcully said, and he stood up, patting Drumknott’s shoulder. Drumknott glanced at the hand as if it was a particularly odious animal, but when he turned this glance up to Ridcully’s face, the old wizard, beatifically ignoring Drumknott’s irritation, roughly patted his cheek instead.

Drumknott’s lip twitched, and he leaned his head away from the Archchancellor, moving away and out of the room.

“Well,” Ridcully said, looking to Ponder, his thatch of grey eyebrows raised in expectation. “You ask Hex?”

“Yes,” Ponder said.

“And?”

“Well,” Ponder said. “Hex… Hex said it was complicated, basically. And I asked who Drumknott’s husband was, in the roundworld.”

“And?”

Ponder held up a sheet of parchment that Hex had printed out.

“+++Worth more than salt to say.+++”

“Worth more than salt?” repeated the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “What does that mean?”

“I think it means,” said Rincewind, darkly, “more than _its_ salt to say.”

There was a ponderous silence.

“Oh, dear,” said the Bursar, who had just woken up from a rather pleasant nap, and found that the meeting was still going on around him.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

He was making a display in the library, setting various books about cryptography handsomely into display stands to make them appealing. He felt… There hadn’t been a moment of realisation, this time. He had simply woken up this morning, on Earth, as Rufus Drumknott, in the same way he woke up every morning on the Disc as Rufus Drumknott.

The shift of discrete memories and experiences meshed oddly in his head, and he was aware of _Rufus’_ ideas, his thoughts, as much as its own – it was like wearing a second coat, and he was sometimes clumsy in going about his day, but he certainly had pockets to choose from[10].

“The phone is ringing,” Havelock[11] said from behind him. Drumknott was aware of it – the phone was ringing regularly on the desk just behind him, and he had been ignoring it for the past forty seconds.

“Yes, I know,” Drumknott said.

“You aren’t going to answer it?”

“No,” Drumknott said. “It’s Mr Fell.”

Rufus and Havelock, Drumknott was aware, knew Mr Fell and his partner very well, and they had been in attendance at their wedding, but during working hours, he did not ordinarily answer the phone to Mr Fell. This was because Mr Fell, a very sensible and tightly-laced man, often had complicated questions about elements of the library’s rare collections downstairs, and in any case, almost always answered his own questions before he’d even finished asking them.

“Oh,” Havelock said. “Well, don’t let it _ring_.” He picked up the phone’s receiver, and then dropped it onto the hook again with a quiet click. Drumknott huffed out a low laugh. “If he rings back, invite him to dinner on Sunday. Give us some allies at the table, as well as Esmerelda. I don’t know where yet.”

“Alright,” Drumknott said.

“And his young man.”

“I wouldn’t invite him and not the other.”

“You _would_ ,” Havelock said. “You _have_.”

Drumknott looked at the cover of a book about Morse Code, considering this. Yes, he had, he remembered, looking at Rufus’ memories alongside his own – but those had been extenuating circumstances, as he recalled. “That wasn’t a matter of _exclusion_ ,” he said, not unreasonably. “He’s just… annoying, at times.”

“I rather like him,” Havelock said.

“Yes,” Drumknott replied. “I know.”

“Jealous?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Havelock was standing behind him now, and Drumknott leaned on his heels, looking up at him, so that his head touched against the front of Havelock’s knees. Havelock had a slight smirk on his face, and he said, “I rather _enjoy_ it when you get jealous.”

“When I _act_ jealous, you mean?” Drumknott asked, arching an eyebrow. It felt… _Odd_ , not having his glasses on. He would have them on, were he on the Disc: he’d be wearing them, feeling their weight, and they’d slide up the bridge of his nose because of the way his head was tilted back. Of course, it also felt odd, slipping into the natural roles of someone else’s familiar banter, even if one of the parties wore his face. Rufus had never, Drumknott knew, been jealous of the man Vimes exclusively called _that flash bastard_ , although he often pretended to be, because Havelock enjoyed it, and yet they were… _playful_ about it. It struck him as odd, that a couple – any couple – could make a game out of that sort of thing, at the idea of _not_ trusting one another, but it did feel… Fun. It felt easy.

“ _Act_ implies you do it only for my benefit,” Havelock said.

“Yes,” Drumknott agreed. The phone began to ring, and he moved to stand, but Havelock waved him off, leaning back against the desk and drawing it against his ear.

“Palace Road Library, Havelock Vetinari speaking,” he said pleasantly, in what Drumknott was aware was a _telephone_ voice. They had those, here, voices just for the telephone, although most people didn’t realize what they were doing until it was pointed out. “Ezra, I do wish you wouldn’t call me that: I haven’t been anyone’s _young man_ since about 1985.”  

He walked away, cradling the phone against his ear as he made some notes on a journal he’d drawn from one of his pockets, and Drumknott smiled slightly, returning to his work. He expected to wake up, but he didn’t. The day just… kept going on.

He worked out the rest of his day in the library, and he and Havelock went home together. They walked the dog in the park, came home, and Drumknott painted some models at the kitchen table while Havelock chopped vegetables, and they talked, in a sort of easy, natural way, about whatever came to mind.

He spoke at length about the Bletchley Circle, before beginning a somewhat impassioned speech about a roundworld historical figure named Alan Turing. It was a speech that Rufus had heard a few dozen times previously, but hearing it for the first time, even as he remembered its details, Drumknott was spellbound.

He was a skilled orator – Vetinari was, too, but he always spoke with a quiet subtlety, often with very little emotion. On the occasions he truly _was_ angry, which were mercifully few, he tended to keep things short and tightly wound. Drumknott all but forgot about the train conductor in his hand, upon whom he was delicately painting buttons and epaulettes in shining gold paint.

“The _injustice_ of it,” Havelock said, gesturing widely with his hand, and when the dog, a clumsy King Charles spaniel whose name was Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, sat on his feet, he leaned down and scooped him under his arm, letting him lay against his breast without even stopping to take a breath, “of rewarding that desperate patriotism, that _devotion_ , with so obscene and so inhuman a—”

Havelock closed his eyes as Bertie licked his chin, and he gave the dog a very stern look. Bertie looked up at him beatifically, his stupid eyes uncomprehending, and Drumknott smiled as he looked back to his train conductor. He spoke with _passion_. Passion, and justice, and a sort of deep-seated rage that Drumknott was already aware his own Vetinari fostered, but didn’t believe he had ever witnessed in its raw form.

“Did Keith remember to come around?” Drumknott asked. Keith was a young man of about fourteen, who kept rats, cats, snakes, and, indeed, almost any other animal that crossed over his path. He was a quiet boy, but Rufus actually rather appreciated that, and so did Drumknott, now. He would ordinarily let himself into the house and play with Bertie for an hour or so in the garden, or occasionally walk him: in exchange, they would usually leave him a ten pound note, and he would be able to practice his flute in the comfort of their home. Bertie _liked_ music, and would wag his tail and listen eagerly as Keith played; Keith’s own menagerie had mixed feelings about it, although he was very good, and it apparently made some of the animals very stressed, not to mention his foster brother, who was only two years old, and apparently didn’t care for classical music. Nor, indeed, did his foster _parents_. It occurred to Drumknott that it was _strange_ , that they should live like this.

The Palace on the Disc was ever under careful, stringent security, and every member of staff reported on several others. It was a mess of paranoid threads, and yet, all that was perfectly necessary, to avoid even more assassination attempts than usual, but here…

Here, Keith let himself in every day they were working, fed their dog, played his flute. They invited friends for dinner, received parcels and letters right to their front door, didn’t have food tasted by several others before it was eaten.

“Yes, I think so,” Havelock murmured, scratching Bertie under his chin. “He’s practising more often now, to do his Grade 7, I believe.” Distantly, Drumknott was aware that Rufus felt a sort of melancholy, or would do, in this situation: he didn’t know how it must feel to have an interloper in one’s head, _you_ but _not_ you… And he didn’t much want to consider it, when there was no alternative.

But Rufus felt melancholy, a sort of distant sadness, and Drumknott had been trying to lean into his instincts, to ensure he wasn’t saying anything entirely wrong, but… He lets the question pass from his lips, the question Rufus would ask, “Did you _ever_ want children?”

Havelock looked at him very seriously, still holding the dog in his arms. Had there been a Wuffles, on Earth? Had there been a Mr Fusspot? Drumknott didn’t know. He didn’t think so.

“I don’t know,” Havelock said quietly. “It’s… Very different now, you understand, to how it used to be. I didn’t envision any of this would be possible. The first death from AIDS here in the UK was in ’81, I seem to recall: I had just turned 19. I half-expected to be dead before we reached the new millennium, let alone nearly fifteen years _post_ the turn of the century, married to a young man painting children’s toys at my kitchen table.” AIDS. The word tremors in Rufus’ consciousness, and Drumknott almost feels guilty, for how far-removed he feels from the emotion the word seems to evoke.

“It’s my kitchen table,” Drumknott said primly, giving the train conductor a very sensible pair of black shoes. “I picked it out, and I assembled it.”

“I helped,” Havelock said, putting the dog down and moving to wash his hands again.

“You made me _a_ cup of tea. Singular.”

“That was helping.” Drumknott smiled, focusing on his conductor, and Havelock said, “I am… Perhaps I did think of it, once upon a time, once or twice, but it never measured on my list of priorities. And now… I’m old—”

“You’re _fifty-two_.” The Disc’s Vetinari was sixty. Drumknott wasn’t sure if that disparity was important.

“And there is the issue of security,” Havelock went on patiently.

“Security,” Drumknott echoed. And just like that, he remembered, and wondered why he hadn’t remembered before. _It was a lifetime ago_ , perhaps his counterpart would say.

Havelock lying back in a hospital bed, his thigh a mess of new scars where Vimes had shot him, and saying, in an almost casual way, “Curious that you should have chosen to add such a _definitive_ full stop to my retirement, Vimes.” Because he was giving up the Family. Because… Drumknott’s mind played through various images, newspaper headlines, vague understandings of complicated legal business, and immunity deals.

Havelock saying in the hospital room, “You needn’t stay, now that you know,” and Rufus saying, “I would have stayed even if you’d kept at it.”

He would have, too.

“I killed an awful lot of people,” Havelock  murmured seriously, wiping his hands on a clean towel. He had, too. Professionally, and yet here, on Earth, that seems to mean so much more than it would, back in Ankh-Morpork. “Hurt a good deal more. I’m never _surprised_ when people want some manner of revenge, Rufus, but—”

“No, I know,” Drumknott said, tasting the bitterness in his mouth, and knowing it wasn’t his own. “I know. Bertie.”

The dog leapt into Drumknott’s arms as he leaned back from the table, nuzzling a wet nose into Drumknott’s belly, and Drumknott dragged his fingers through the dog’s thick, glossy fur, feeling him wriggle in his lap. “I wasn’t,” he began, feeling he should make some explanation, “I wasn’t _asking_. I was just… asking. If you’d thought about it.”

“Yes, it didn’t feel as pointed as when you ask about the allotments, I confess,” Havelock said.

“I _do_ want an allotment,” Drumknott said immediately, and Havelock flicked the dish towel at him, making the dog jump up in his lap and wag his tail furiously. This was apparently a great bone of contention between the two of them, and had been for several years.

“Please, my precious man, my one and only, _luce_ dei miei occhi,” Havelock said, catching him by his cheeks.

“I love it when you Italiate at me,” Drumknott said, watching the way Havelock scowled at the made-up word. It was true, too: he had a way of pronouncing the words with a passion he lacked in English, and it made him feel warm and comfortable, like coming home to find the fire crackling in the hearth. Vetinari’s first language was Morporkian, Drumknott thought, but he wasn’t actually _sure_ – he’d never asked.

“Take all these paints off _your_ kitchen table, if you would,” Havelock murmured, and he leaned in to kiss him, but Bertie jumped up between them, and Drumknott laughed.

The night went on. They ate dinner. They retired to the living room, and Drumknott played at the piano as Havelock read behind him, the dog asleep in his lap. They went to bed. Havelock kissed him, long and slow, and they touched each other with the ease of two people taking their time, who had all the time in the world. Drumknott realized he’d never had sex like this in his _life_ , without some sort of schedule to be aware of, without something looming over them, without a deadline to keep from. He didn’t have to worry about getting home to the Palace, or worry about his clothes being pressed, or about not getting enough sleep…

He fell asleep with his cheek on Havelock’s chest, and felt himself fall asleep. The day had gone on, and on, and on, and he thought he would wake… And he didn’t. Not until he lay his head down on the pillow.

He woke, apparently in the very next moment, feeling comfortable and well-rested, in the Palace.

 It was… _Different_ , after that. Drumknott wasn’t sure what exactly had shifted, what exactly had dropped into place, but after the business with Whittle falling asleep, everything must have evened out.

He’d live out his day on the Disc, go to bed in his bed, in the Palace, and he’d live out his day on Earth, and then go to sleep… And wake up in the Palace.

It should have been exhausting, he supposed, but he never _felt_ exhausted – he seemed to get a good amount of rest, and he wasn’t waking up with a headache, wasn’t waking up feeling ill. The morning after Whittle, he’d felt a little ill, but that was more due to the strange sensation of lying down to sleep and then immediately waking up to work again, even though he felt perfectly well-rested.

The days went past, and every day, he would carefully note down the important details – Earthly things mentioned, new names, new pieces of geography, of history. They didn’t seem to help: the wizards looked in vain for the file, and Mr Whittle slept in his bed, with Mr Dripp beside him.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

On Saturday afternoon, Drumknott had just brought in a cup of tea, as well as the afternoon post, and was in the process of putting on his coat and his gloves to go and play for Room XB. Vetinari had had his reservations about it, but apparently the wizards had asked the machine Hex, and the machine had said that it was advisable to accept the risk of more psychic issues rather than to risk not playing for the files at all.

He’d been reading the reports each morning, and no apparent message seemed to have revealed itself: nor indeed had the identity of Drumknott’s partner, within the dream-universe he’d been experiencing. Vetinari could _ask_ him, he supposed: Drumknott would probably tell him, if he asked, directly.

He didn’t.

It _was_ , after all, likely one of the wizards, and that idea did grate somewhat, as odd as it might seem. He didn’t want to lend further irritation to the idea by letting himself focus on the wizard in question. There was concern, however, in that the dreams were lasting in the way they were.

According to Drumknott, he was now living his days back to back, and it sounded difficult to sustain, regardless of what Drumknott said about the relative ease. Sleep was more than a mere bookend – the respite allowed one’s mind to work through problems, allowed one to _recharge **[12]**_.

“I may be a little longer than usual,” Drumknott said quietly as he pulled his gloves into place, adjusting them into place. “I plan to visit the infirmary, and check in on Mr Whittle. I was musing, last night, that if indeed, he _is_ in the same universe, I might be able to get hold of him, particularly if he retains the same name.”

“I see,” Vetinari murmured. “ _Do_ be careful.”

“Of course,” Drumknott said, with a slight smile. It was an absent thing, just a slight quirk of his lips, but Vetinari had to concentrate to keep his own gaze from lingering on it. He was smiling more often in the past few days, and while it was pleasant, it was… _odd_. “Would you like me to pick anything up when I’m in the city?”

“No, thank you,” Vetinari said. “I should like for you to be back by six o’clock, however, as I prefer your minutes for the Council than young Perkins’.”

“Understood,” Drumknott said, with a small nod of his head, and he reached back for the door, stepping out into the corridor. “See you later. Love you!” he threw the last two words casually over his shoulder as he drew the door shut behind him, and for a very, very long moment, Vetinari was utterly still. He was good at being still. It came naturally to him. He had spent long hours practising it when he’d been at school.

After a while of being still, he sat down heavily in his chair. He kept expecting Drumknott to rush back in from the corridor, to realize what he’d said, but he wasn’t going to, Vetinari realized: it was evidently so automatic to him, in that other universe, that he didn’t think about it.

Not…

Not a wizard, then.

Vetinari picked up last night’s report, and he looked at it critically.

_Dream #6 (Fri 11 th March)_

  * _Day off from library. Husband and I drove out of the city to meet some friends in a village named Tadfield. Had lunch and drank some wine. Mild day._
  * _Year on Earth is 2015._
  * _Mention was made of Mustrum Ridcully, in-universe the Head of Physics at the university, with whom in-dream self had apparently had contact since I was a small boy, as opposed to meeting him when he became Archchancellor, when I was 16._
  * _Esmerelda, arriving Sunday (two days’ time, not three, as Earth week is 7 days instead of 8.), last name Weatherwax. Gytha Ogg and Maggie Garlick, other librarians, being left in charge of the library in Kings Longley._
  * _No other salient details._



Vetinari thought of Drumknott’s desperate embarrassment in defining, precisely, what his pun had referred to. He thought of, equally, the chalky pale consistency of Drumknott’s face when Ponder Stibbons had suggested the omniscope. Ridcully had even mentioned, hadn’t he, that Hex had refused to tell them…?

_Husband and I…_

Drumknott was nearly thirty years his junior, and he had just thrown a declaration of easy, casual love over his shoulder, meant for a Vetinari that was not, in fact, _Vetinari_ , and yet… Was.

He had work to do.

He attended to that, instead of focusing on all this.

He couldn’t…

He couldn’t.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Mr Dripp,” Drumknott said quietly, and Dripp looked up from his book, peering up at him. For a long moment, Drumknott regarded him critically, in a way that very few people looked at Dripp. Ordinarily, when they looked at him, they did so with no small amount of revulsion or distaste, ready to flinch away at any moment.

Drumknott didn’t look at him with anymore distaste than he looked at most of the students with[13], and there was a sort of critical examination behind the lenses of his glasses that Dripp wasn’t sure how to respond to.

“Er,” Dripp said.

“What sort of magic do you pursue, Mr Dripp?” Drumknott asked quietly. Behind him, the infirmary doors were opening and closing as the Lecturer in Recent Runes, the Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons, the Senior Wrangler, and Rincewind each filtered in, but Drumknott didn’t turn around once.

“Oh, well, I’ve been experimenting with Catter’s Laws of Lushness, and trying to break them,” Dripp said excitedly. No one had ever asked him about his research before, and natural passion for the work overtook the instinct to be frightened of Drumknott. “Basically—”

“Irving Catter’s Laws of Lushness cover, I believe,” Drumknott said quietly, “make some dictation on the natural moisture of any point in the universe. They link into the theory of _what it is_ , but, in essence, Doctor Catter says that if a desert is a desert, it shall be dry no matter how much it rains, and that an ocean shall be an ocean, no matter how hot it gets?”

Dripp stared at him stupidly, his mouth open.

“Er,” he said. “Yes, sort of, but—”

Drumknott held up a hand, and Dripp closed his mouth. Said mouth, Drumknott noticed, was not drooling profusely. Nor, indeed, were Mr Dripp’s eyes any more obscenely rheumatized than any other young man’s eyes. Oh, his face was _filthy_ , that much was true – sticky, slick grime caked his cheeks and his chin, and especially around his nose, but he wasn’t _overproducing_ as ordinarily he did.

“You study quite hard, Mr Dripp?” Drumknott asked.

“Oh, yes, every day,” Dripp said.

“How often do you perform magic in the course of your week?”

“Well, lots. Every day.”

“But not this week?”

“What? No,” Dripp said emphatically. “No, he’s… It’s the infirmary! I couldn’t do magic in here, and I don’t want to…” Dripp glanced at the other wizards, and his cheeks flushed. It was rather difficult to see, under the caked mess of yellows and dark oranges on the skin, but the blush was almost visible. “I don’t want to leave him on his own,” he said quietly, lamely.

“Got a high pain threshold?” Drumknott asked, as if going through a survey none of the others could see. Ponder was making notes.

“Er… Well, I don’t know,” Dripp said. “I suppose so. The sort of magic I do needs to be channelled through a living element, and it’s quite powerful, even before it can be stored in a staff, so—” Many of the wizards, except Rincewind, winced in sympathy. “It’s kinda like, um, I don’t know. Getting hit by lightning, but a few times a day.”

Drumknott struck out so quickly Dripp didn’t even notice him, and it wasn’t until he looked down at his thigh that he saw the pin sticking out of the flesh there. Neatly, Drumknott removed it, and as a sort of afterthought, because he felt he was supposed to, Dripp woodenly said, “Ow.”

“You barely feel anything, I expect?”

“Well, I feel _some_ things,” Dripp said, defensively, but Drumknott had already moved a line down his invisible questionnaire. Ponder was scribbling furiously, and Rincewind was leaning in to look over his shoulder.

“Your work, I presume,” Drumknott said, “centres upon producing moisture where there is none? Beyond the conjuration of water, I suppose, your research centres upon making the water there is _wetter_ , and making it come more vigorously from its sources?”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Dripp said. “How did you know?”

Drumknott sighed, in a sort of self-satisfied way, and he turned away from Dripp to the assembled wizards. He didn’t bother to answer the question. Instead, he said, “I know who _you_ are on Earth, Archchancellor.”

“Oh?” Ridcully asked, and he glanced with interest as Ponder took the last night’s report in hand, furrowing his brow and hunching his shoulders forward slightly as he read it.

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “The Librarian was my best man, at my wedding.”

“The Librarian?” the Archchancellor repeated. “Well, you know, he isn’t, er… You know, what with—”

“Of course, Archchancellor,” Drumknott said, “he wasn’t turned into an orangutan on Earth. He’s just… a man.”

“Ah!”

“I believe mention was made of you too, _Mr_ Rincewind, although that isn’t my priority.” He said this very pointedly, and Rincewind frowned.

“If you know us,” Ponder said, “you might know Mr Whittle.”

“Indeed,” Drumknott said quietly. “I’m going to go through our wedding album this evening, look and see if his face is present – if not, I’ll simply go to the university and speak with your equivalent, Archchancellor, and see if he knows the man. Or Mr Dripp, of course.”

“He is very distinctive,” the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, looking at Mr Dripp in horror. Dripp, who had been used to conversations being carried on over his head since he was a very small boy, did not notice, and continued reading his textbook. He had scooted his chair as close to Whittle’s bed as possible, and would occasionally read a passage aloud to him. “What you were asking him about, does that mean…?” He trailed off. Drumknott watched him expectantly, but there was something about Drumknott’s expectant gaze that made people want to hide behind a wall, and so the Lecturer in Recent Runes coughed quietly, and shrugged.

“Good a plan as any,” Ridcully muttered. “Do you think he’s, er, less…” He gestured at Dripp in an arcane manner.

“Oh, yes,” Drumknott said. “I expect so.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Henry Whittle had already kissed Horace about three hundred times in the past several days. He just… couldn’t _believe_ it. It wasn’t Dripp, not exactly, not really, and it seemed to him as if this was a pretty basic convergence of parallel universes, likely as a result of him forging an accidental telepathic connection with Room XB, especially given that he didn’t usually dream and now, all of a sudden he was dreaming, but—

Well, none of that mattered.

There was no magic in this universe, so it wasn’t as if _he_ could do anything about it. But, Horace? Horace, who was Dripp, but… Not drippy? Horace, who had Dripp’s soft, sweet compliments, and Dripp’s gentle smiles, and Dripp’s _care_ , and none of Dripp’s—

Well.

Not _none_ of Dripp’s fluids.

But certainly a lot less.

“God, have you been taking Viagra?” Horace asked.

“We don’t have to have sex,” Henry said, his hands on Horace’s cheeks. Horace was looking at him, and Henry just couldn’t get enough of his _eyes_ , of how bright they were, of the colour in them. “I just want to kiss you.”

Horace’s mouth shifted into a slight moue. “ _Can_ we have sex?” he asked. He almost whined it, and for some reason – Henry didn’t know why – it was endearing rather than annoying. He often found this was the case with Dripp.

“So long as we can keep kissing,” Henry said.

“Oh,” Horace said, and he smiled. It wasn’t a beautiful smile: he wasn’t a beautiful man, even without congealed mess all over his face. He was plain, his features a little lopsided, in such a way as to make him slightly ugly, but he wore his good cheer like a well-worn, favourite jumper, and it fit him very well. “Alright,” he said, and kissed Henry as he pushed him back onto the bed.

 

[1] Drumknott knew a variety of cursive scripts, both his own and belonging to other people, but he believed that printed letters were less ambiguous, and lended themselves to quicker scanning of the text. He had argued quite formidably with his tutors in college over this, firmly maintaining his position that _tradition_ ought not overwhelm _common sense_.

[2] The unfortunate members of the councils in which Drumknott took minutes, however, did _not_ like Mr Drumknott’s shorthand, and it was felt his particular code was one of the most intimidating to regard on paper, as it revealed nothing, but seemed to imply that something very horrible about you, yes, _you_ , was being written down right underneath your nose, and you couldn’t even read it.

[3] [Image](https://scontent-dub4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/52561507_1459999424135999_7796325047739613184_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_ht=scontent-dub4-1.xx&oh=48ffafef8fcfe3feb0495098da2f61d6&oe=5CE744C5).

[4] Indeed, on the other side of the city, Mustrum Ridcully was drinking rather heavily from a flask as Ponder Stibbons regarded him with confusion.

[5] [Image.](https://scontent-dub4-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/52601988_1459999454135996_2112289423256190976_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_ht=scontent-dub4-1.xx&oh=70bac85f6f50750bdbd52e166e588fcf&oe=5CEE11A9)

[6] While Vetinari was not, alas, as immune to human wants and desires as he would like to be, but he had found that carefully rationing the times in which he allowed his thoughts to wander from work allowed him to indulge without _over_ indulging, and becoming distracted.

[7] In contact with his burning head, it was swiftly becoming water, and he ached for some proper drink to put in the glass, like whiskey, or gin.

[8] Of course, none such men were in _this_ room. No, no, no, sir, of course, were they _permitted_ to want such things, theoretically, all of them would be quite interested in women, and their, uh, their bosoms, and what-not. Of course. Women! Yes. What a sad shame to have given all that up. Women and their… Uh, ankles?

[9] Of course, _none_ of them even know where Lurkers Lane _was_ , they would swear.

[10] Drumknott looked very favourably upon sensible pockets.

[11] He had decided he would _have_ to think of them, separately, as Havelock and Vetinari, else he would go mad with the strain.

[12] Vetinari, of course, _knew_ sleep was important: he just chose, himself, to prioritise other, equally important things.

[13] This distaste was considerable, but Dripp was on a level far above the usual appropriate ire for students.


	5. Chapter 5

“Havelock,” Drumknott mumbled, but Havelock was undeterred, his tongue flickering over the edge of his thigh. This was, he mused, a _very_ nice way to wake up in the morning, even though in truth, he’d only laid down to sleep a few moments before. Havelock was under the covers, and Drumknott blearily blinked at the ridiculous lump he formed beneath them, even as his breath came hot over his thighs. “Have you been awake long?”

“Mmm, perhaps a little while,” Havelock said. “Still plenty of time before we need to shower. Did you enjoy meeting up with your lovely philatelist friends yesterday?” He flicked his tongue, and Drumknott groaned, tipping his head back.

“Don’t talk to me about philately when you’re doing _that_.”

“Why? I’d do this to a stamp,” Havelock replied, sweeping his tongue demonstratively, and Drumknott moaned. “Of course, I wouldn’t do this.” He threw the covers back, coming to straddle Drumknott’s waist, and for just a moment, Drumknott was disappointed, until—

“Ah—”

“ _Ah_?” Havelock repeated, voice dripping with amusement as he lowered himself down, and Drumknott heaved in desperate little gasps. He’d never— With all his other partners, he’d only _ever_ been the… “Ah,” Havelock moaned against his mouth as Drumknott surged up to kiss him, and he rolled them over, pinning Havelock’s arms above his head.

Havelock’s eyebrows raised, and for a moment, Drumknott hesitated, wondering if he’d misstepped, but then Havelock grinned. “Oh,” he said, in a low, husky voice Drumknott had never heard from Vetinari, but would certainly like to, “I like _this_.” It occurred to Drumknott, strangely, that it wouldn’t be so easy to pin Vetinari like this. There’d be a fight, and Drumknott would probably lose, and that—

That thought lingered, but then he tightened his grip, and he delighted in the way that _this_ Havelock gasped into his mouth and arched his back, his skin hot, his body eager. But it wasn’t Vetinari. And why should it be? Why should he _want_ —?

No. He had _this_ , and he would _take_ it.

“ _Yes_ ,” Vetinari—

No. Not Vetinari, _Havelock_ , moaned in his ear, and Drumknott dragged him into a biting kiss.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

As Drumknott stood from the bed, Havelock lay on his back, completely naked, but for a sheen of sweat. His lips, Drumknott noted ruefully, were somewhat bruised, but he didn’t seem to mind at all, and was breathing evenly, staring up at the ceiling.

“Are you alright?” Drumknott asked.

“Where did _that_ come from?” Havelock asked, his gaze flickering to Drumknott as he flicked on the switch for the shower.

“What?” Drumknott asked.

“ _Rufus_ ,” Havelock said breathlessly. “You’ve never been like _that_ before. You were so _rough_ , so… God.” He looked back at the ceiling, his fingers gently touching against his own lip, and Drumknott swallowed.

“We have to shower,” Drumknott said.

“You expect me to _shower_?” Havelock demanded. “Rufus, you have murdered me!”

“I might in a moment,” Drumknott said. “Come on, _get up._ Oh, Bertie, no—”

It was too late. He heard the skid of the bathmat on the bathroom floor, and then the excited skitter of claw and paw as Bertie Wooster leapt over the edge of the bath, and into the shower, with a loud _thump_. After a moment’s pause, there was a resounding clatter, and Drumknott counted the individual clunks as various bottles came down from the shelf in the corner.

After a pause – and more, Drumknott expected, because he felt it was expected of him than because he was in any pain – the dog emitted a short, woeful “aroo!”, and Drumknott set his jaw. Havelock laughed.

“Stupid dog,” he muttered, and then held out his arm. “Very well. Carry me, you gallant Casanova.”

“I’m not gallant,” Drumknott protested, but he leaned down nonetheless. Havelock wasn’t that heavy, but when Drumknott lifted him, he stared up at Drumknott, his eyes wide, his lips parted. The expression could only be described as lovestruck, and for some reason, it felt uncomfortable rather than exciting, or endearing. _Vetinari_ would never get a look like that on his face.

“Goodness,” he murmured. “Could you do this… Always?”

“I suppose,” Drumknott said. “I’ve just never tried before. You’ve seen me carry both our bikes at once – that’s about the same weight as you.”

“Oh,” Havelock said, laying a hand on Drumknott’s chest. “Let’s get married.”

“We _are_ married.”

“Let’s do it again.”

“Some would argue we’ve done it twice.”

“The civil partnership wasn’t a _marriage_.”

“Still, two ceremonies, two parties.”

“Only one wedding album,” Havelock argued, and Drumknott’s lips twitched as he took a step back, carrying the other man into the bathroom. They both took a pause, looking down at Bertie, who was lying in a messy pile of bottles on the shower mat, his mouth open, his tongue shifting as he panted. _He_ wasn’t like Mr Fusspot, nor like Wuffles had been – he was an excitable dog, hyperactive and overly friendly. Drumknott had never liked dogs especially – he preferred cats – but… Bertie wasn’t like… Not that he would ever presume to call Mr Fusspot or Wuffles _his_ dogs, but in a way, hadn’t they been…?

No. No, they’re Lord Vetinari’s—

Not his.

“Idiot,” Drumknott said.

“Moron,” Havelock agreed fondly.

“ _Aroo_ ,” Bertie said.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It lingered in Drumknott’s mind, as they got the train to Palace Road. He was distracted as Havelock idly mentioned that the plan tomorrow would be to actually have Esmerelda at the house, and that Ezra and Anthony would come meet them at the house. Apparently, Anthony had insisted they could all fit in his car, and there was a Spanish place they’d wanted to try out…

The conversation washed over him, but Drumknott didn’t take much of it in.

He thought about Vetinari. On coach journeys, Vetinari rarely felt the need to fill the silence of the journey with chatter or talk: they sat in companionable silence for long minutes at a time, discussing work, and when their discussion _did_ turn to other matters, it would be quiet debate, or merely thoughtful consideration on some subjects.

_“When did you learn, Drumknott, not to put your faith in gods?”_

_“I confess, sir, I have yet to learn that particular lesson.”_

_“What?”_

_“Sir?”_

_“You’re religious, Drumknott?”_

_“Yes, sir. I’m a devotee of Blind Io, sir. I step into the Temple of Small Gods and make an offering now and then.”_

_“You never said.”_

_“No, sir. I never saw the relevance, sir.”_

_“I believe, Drumknott, on several occasions, I have spoken at length as to my opposition to religion.”_

_“Oh, yes, sir, often.”_

_“And you never thought to argue with me?”_

_“Why, sir? You are no doubt as entrenched in your position as I am in mine.”_ Vetinari had stared at him for a long moment. Drumknott well remembered the journey – it had been to Überwald, long and meandering through all sorts of rough-hewn roads, and they had each been tired, but Vetinari had smiled.

“ _Mr Drumknott, you do sometimes surprise me.”_

_“I endeavour to give good service, sir.”_

“Rufus?”

Drumknott looked up at his not-husband’s furrowed brow and concerned expression, and then he shook his head slightly, standing and following Havelock from the train and out into the corridor, toward the ticket stiles. “Sorry,” he said. “I was somewhere else entirely.”

“You were smiling,” Havelock said lightly, and Drumknott nodded his head.

“Yes,” he said. “Just thinking of something you’d said, about religion. Being God’s moral superior.”

“It is, of course, our duty, my dear,” Havelock said airily, without the stout, stark certainty that Vetinari had, whenever he said the same. Drumknott’s comfortable ease in navigating this not-Vetinari seemed to be failing him, and he tried not to focus on the nest of snakes in his belly as he swiped his Oyster card, stepping out of the stiles and making their way toward the stairs.

It was ridiculous, of course.

He wouldn’t _want_ Vetinari as a husband, as a lover, it would be…

Drumknott thought of Vetinari, standing in his office, his expression furrowed in careful thought, his thin lips frowning. He looked to Havelock, who was smiling pleasantly to Mrs Colon and making small talk with her as she returned her and Fred Colon’s books. His demeanour was open, pleasant…

He thought of Vetinari and his delicate, plainly veined hands, not openly gesticulating, like Havelock’s, but held close to his body, moved very deliberately and carefully, and so much more _skilled_ … Those hands played so many instruments, conducted, wielded all manner of weaponry, juggled, even killed, just on their own.

Drumknott thought of Lord Vetinari’s hands around his neck.

His hands were always so warm, and the very _idea_ …

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vetinari would never, Drumknott mused, as he added new labels to the books, stoop to such a thing. Not ever. He was unimpeachable, _perfect,_ above such things. He would never, not ever, touch Drumknott inappropriately, wouldn’t so much as _look_ at him inappropriately. It would be—

It would be unthinkable.

They _worked_ together.

Lord Vetinari was his _“boss”_ , as the common parlance would put it[1], and that was—

But then, Havelock was _Rufus’_ employer, was he not? Rufus was junior to him, and yet they worked together at the library. That was different, of course: this was just a library. In the Patrician’s office, there was so much more at stake, and so much more to consider. What if Drumknott were to distract Vetinari from his work, or vice versa? What if they quarrelled?

They had never quarrelled before.

They had disagreed, certainly. They had argued, even.

Drumknott remembered, remembered—

_“Sir, I should like to raise an objection, if I may.”_

_“An objection, Drumknott?”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

_“To what?”_

_“To your conduct, sir, these past weeks, in regard to your poisoning. I have waited, I believe, long enough to be sure it is not merely my hot temper—”_

_“I had no idea you had a hot temper, Drumknott.”_

_“”— affecting my considerations, and I am quite sure now. Sir, you’ve been quite… You’ve been very cavalier, I believe, in the handling of your own health.”_

_“Have I, indeed?”_

_“I would ask that you not mock me, sir.”_

_“Drumknott, I would never.”_

_“Sir.”_

_“And what is it, pray, about my cavalier response to my poisoning that so upsets you?”_

_“My lord, you are very important to the city, and to the people in it. I should not like for you, sir, to risk your life unnecessarily, in the unfounded belief, perhaps, that you…”_ He had trailed off. Vetinari had been looking at him rather hard, and his resolve had faltered. “ _I would care a great deal, sir, were you to die. So would Commander Vimes, and Lady Sybil, and Lady Margolotta, and your aunt, sir, and the city would be worse off for it.”_

_“Indeed, Drumknott? Am I not a tyrant?”_

_“I think you like very much for people to think you a tyrant, sir,”_ Drumknott had said. “ _More so, in fact, than I think you like to act the part_.”

_“I see. Thank you, Drumknott, for your frankness.”_

_“Yes, sir. Some tea, sir?”_

_“Please.”_

Perhaps that had been a quarrel. He had been very upset, himself, in the aftermath of that incident with the golems… And Lord Vetinari, he felt, had been kinder in the weeks after that. And he did care, didn’t he? He didn’t know what he would do, if Lord Vetinari died. The natural think, he supposed, would be to go on working as clerk for the next Patrician, but that didn’t sit well with him. It would be unnatural. He had never had an employer like Vetinari before, and he couldn’t imagine another one matching him for efficiency, nor for sense of duty.

The Patricians before him, his mother had said years ago, hadn’t been… Mad Snapcase had been monstrous, and cruel, had murdered people in the streets, had left people destroyed, let alone killed or tortured; Winder had been paranoid and desperate, had left people as frightened as he was.

Lord Vetinari wasn’t like that.

Drumknott _knew_ what people thought of him, and he knew that Vetinari could be dangerous, if he wanted to, to individual people who meant to do harm, but he wasn’t cruel, and he wasn’t capricious. He would never bring harm and pain to a group of people just for the sin of living, no matter what those people were like, no matter their race, their occupation, anything that might prejudice others against him.

He was better than that.

He was—

 _Noble_.

And it was a privilege, Drumknott thought, to be able to serve him. How could this Havelock compare, when his work was… _Nothing_? When it didn’t matter? How could he be satisfied here, in any capacity, in this world, when there was no greater purpose, nothing to _work_ toward, no greater calling?

Havelock was… _kind_. And there were similarities, Drumknott felt, to Vetinari, beyond the physical: they were each noble, self-sacrificing, erudite, charming, with propensities for wordplay, but there the similarities ended. He was so extroverted, so open with others, so _emotional_ , so soft.

Havelock was to Vetinari what a butter knife was to a dagger.

And Drumknott…

At this point, Drumknott discovered, he was used to being cut.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Are you alright?” Havelock asked as they stepped into the house, and Drumknott nodded, leaning down and catching Bertie as he leapt a foot into the air, supporting the dog against his chest and absently scratching his ears. “You’ve been so distracted all day.” Havelock leaned in closer, wrapping his arms loosely around Drumknott’s body, his arms around Drumknott’s waist.

What would it be like, were Vetinari to…?

No.

“Oh, yes,” Drumknott said. “Just thoughtful, I think. Did you put the album away?”

“Mm, yes, it’s with the others,” Havelock murmured in his ear, and then kissed the side of his temple. “I’m going to go work out in the greenhouse for a little while, take Bertie with me. You want to come sit outside?”

“No,” Drumknott said. “No, I want to, uh… I just want a little while to go through the albums.”

“Alone?” There was an uncertainty in Havelock’s voice, and Drumknott racked Rufus’ memory for explanations as to why, and none came precisely. Havelock kissed the side of his temple again. “You are alright? You’ll tell me if you’re not?”

“Yes, I promise,” Drumknott said, offering him a small smile, and he let Bertie down to follow Havelock out into the kitchen, and out into the garden.

There were a few photo albums. He was almost excited to be able to go through them, to put his mind to _work_ , instead of let it linger on Vetinari: if there was any sign of Whittle, or of Dripp, he might be able to… Of course. Of course, he knew, now, who Ridcully was to Rufus, and who the Librarian was, in this universe.

He would remember, through Rufus’ memories, if Whittle had been at the wedding.

But—

The memories didn’t come all that easily, and even though he knew, he was so curious. Couldn’t he be curious?

He moved across the room, kneeling by the bottom shelf, where the photo albums were. They were bound in leather, and one of them was older than the others, of a heavier, darker leather. Drumknott slid it off the shelf, opening it in his lap, and he exhaled softly as he looked at the first photograph. It was an old-fashioned portrait: a woman with olive skin and ringlets of dark hair, standing with a tall, pale man with icy eyes… He was heavier than Havelock was, and he had a thick beard where Havelock (and Vetinari) each cultivated very careful goatees, but Drumknott saw the similarity immediately, was struck with it.

Francesa, his mother, was holding a baby in her arms, wrapped in dark green blankets… She died, Drumknott knew, six months or so after Vetinari was born, of some sudden illness. Was that the same in this universe? He thought so. And Vincenzo…

He looked _so_ like him. Drumknott had never seen any pictures of him before – the iconograph hadn’t been brought to Ankh-Morpork until long after he’d died, and while there were likely portraits of him, Drumknott had never seen them. He paged through the album, looking at the photographs. He knew he oughtn’t. These weren’t relevant whatsoever, not to anything, but again, curiosity caught hold of him.

Havelock Vetinari as a boy, playing in the Sicilian countryside, on horseback, in amidst an olive grove, doing a handstand on a beach. A little boy, with a shock of black hair, and such a wide grin on his face in almost every photograph… And then the change, when he was seven or so: the grey, dismal skies over darker lawns and forests, living with his Roberta, when he came to England, after his father had died.

He looked so serious, all of a sudden. So few smiles in the photographs: pictures of him practising with his violin, or sitting at the piano; pictures of him painting… There were photographs of him with Madam, too, each of them staring at the camera with knowing, superior smiles.

Drumknott stopped short on one photograph, of a young Havelock, not older than twelve, with a serious expression on his face. On the clothed table before him was a disassembled handgun, and he was putting it back together.

Drumknott skipped toward the end of the album, and he stared at another photograph of Havelock, this time in his early 20s. This one had a bruise on the side of his face, his lip split, and he was grinning savagely: his t-shirt, emblazoned with the saying **FRANKIE SAYS RELAX** , was stained with blood. His arm was around the shoulder of Margolotta, who was smoking a cigarette: she, too, was sporting some bruises, her knuckles red with marks. The uncharitable part of Drumknott, the one that had already been sufficiently vocal for the rest of the day, pointed out that _Vetinari_ would never have taken so many punches, were he in an altercation.

They’d gotten into fights at university. Rufus had known that, too, had known, because they’d been so open, so vocal, about who and what they were, had _sought out_ anyone who… It was funny, Drumknott supposed. Was this all that different to his own Vetinari, who all but encouraged Assassins to try their hand at killing him?

This wasn’t helpful.

He put the album back, and he picked up the wedding album, running his fingers over the tasteful brown leather it was made with, feeling it under his fingers. The front of it was decorated in golden gilt lettering: _Our Wedding_.

He stared at the image on the cover, of Havelock and Rufus. It was not from the ceremony itself – it must have been taken after, because it was the two of them in a bar, although still in their neat suits, he thought. Havelock’s eyes were closed, and his chin was resting on Rufus’ head, who was sitting in his lap. Their hands were intertwined.

He opened the album.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

It was not, Drumknott mused afterward, the relationship between Rufus and Havelock that made him feel so… Strange.

Certainly, they were visibly very in love, signing their contract with smiles on their faces, looking at one another devotedly throughout the ceremony, even as the rabbi took them through the service, stamping on a glass: they were both beaming, often embracing, and the photographs of them dancing were the sort of thing Drumknott would never have expected from two men, they were so _tender_ , so visibly full of affection. Rufus and Havelock loved one another dearly, but it wasn’t that that unnerved him.

It wasn’t the lack of his sister, her husband, or her children in the photos: he was aware, however uncomfortably, that his roundworld equivalent did not speak with his sister, and hadn’t in many years, not since a little after he’d first begun seeing Vetinari[2]. That saddened him, but it wasn’t the thing that clung with him.

No.

No, what _upset_ him, Drumknott supposed, were the photos of the wedding reception.

There were photos of Rufus and Havelock dancing, yes. There were other people in the photos too, of course. Margolotta was there; Havelock’s aunt was present. Drumknott saw other members of the Library staff, including Mr Lockheed. He saw Moist von Lipwig and Adora Belle Dearheart; he saw Sam Vimes and Sybil Ramkin, and various assortments from this world’s equivalent of the Watch. He saw Fred Colon, looking out of place in a blue suit that didn’t fit him well; he saw Nobby Nobbs, in… The garments he wore did _not_ bear description[3].  There were photographs of Carrot and Angua. There were photographs, then, of these other Librarians – Maggie, and Esmerelda, and Gytha. Laughing in one photo, visibly very drunk and each of them hanging off one of Havelock’s shoulders, were Ezra Fell and Anthony Crowley. There were _other_ librarians, librarians that Drumknott did not know the equivalents of, in his own universe. There were members of his philately group, and friends from a stationery club. He saw too, Mr Bent, from the City Bank, and he saw Charlie, and he saw Leonard DeQuirm[4]. He saw men from the university. Ridcully, and the Librarian, and others of the wizards. He even saw several photos of Rosemary Palm, who embraced Havelock like a brother, and (he guessed, by the photos) later went home with his aunt.

It was not the presence of any of these people that unnerved him. Were Vetinari to get married in their own world, a mad thought, these people would all be invited, or their equivalents. When one had a wedding reception, one invited people.

It wasn’t the…

 _Presence_ of all these people. It was a lot of people, to be sure, but—

It was the way they _looked_ in the photos.

None of them looked as they were obligated to be there, not one of them.

No, in the photographs, all of them seemed to be, for lack of a better word, having _fun_.

Drumknott stared at one photo, of Havelock and Rufus posing with Adora Belle, Moist, and Mr Fusspot. They were posed like a family, and that… That _tugged_ at something in him. Not jealousy, certainly – Moist von Lipwig was _infuriating_ , and certainly, Drumknott yearned for no connection to him, but…

In another photo, Rufus had been tackled and lifted off the ground, still slightly blurry from struggling, and a row of – in his own universe – wizards held him up: Ridcully, the Librarian, the Lecturer in Recent Runes, the Dean, and the Senior Wrangler. They were all _beaming_ , and in the next photograph, Ridcully was ruffling his hair as the Librarian hugged him. It looked… More than friendly, again, it looked familial: they both seemed so _paternal_.

There was a photo of Rufus arm-wrestling Ponder Stibbons. There was a photo of Rufus and Havelock playing darts with Carrot and Moist; Havelock arguing passionately with the woman named Esmerelda; Rufus dancing with Sybil, Havelock dancing with Vimes; the same in reverse; Margolotta leaving a lipstick stain on Rufus’ cheek; Ezra with Anthony in his lap, apparently giving the Rufus in the photograph a stern talking to.

They weren’t there out of obligation, none of them.

They were friends of the grooms.

It occurred to Drumknott, in a very sudden and somewhat striking way, that were _he_ to get married, he would not really have anyone to invite.

He would invite Vetinari, of course, but he could hardly come; he would invite the Librarian. He would invite his sister, and her family…

And that was it.

He didn’t really _have_ friendships. He had working relationships, some of which were comfortably friendly, he felt. But he didn’t… He didn’t have _time_ for that sort of thing, to waste all of this time with people, there was _work_ to do.

Was he lonely?

He didn’t ordinarily think about it.

He didn’t think so.

Drumknott had too much to be getting on with to think about being lonely. He had his work, his filing, he had Lord Vetinari… That was enough, wasn’t it? That was enough? Ought he want more, looking at photographs like this?

He did want more, he supposed. But not more friends, he didn’t want all the wizards to treat him like _that_ , to be so friendly, to… Did he? No. No, he didn’t. He’d hate all that attention, all that nonsense and roughing about. He didn’t mind a little of it, from Ridcully, but he wouldn’t…

There was a ring at the doorbell, and he hurriedly shut the album, setting it aside and moving toward the door, drawing it open.

Ezra Fell stood on the doorstep. He was neatly put together – he always was. He was in his fifties, only a little taller than Drumknott, and he ever appeared in wool or tweed or both: today, he was wearing a startlingly bland camel suit, with a woollen waistcoat made of some tartan pattern. He smiled, when he saw Drumknott, but then froze.

There was something about Mr Fell, Drumknott knew, that went beyond the odd way he could be about the books in the library’s special collection. Whenever Rufus had brought it up, Havelock brushed it off as little more than some potential sixth sense – “If, my dear, you _believe_ in that sort of thing.”

Now, Ezra’s watery blue eyes were fixated on Drumknott, his brow furrowed.

“Hello, Rufus,” he said, very slowly. “Anthony?” he called over his shoulder.

“You know, dinner is tomorrow, Ezra,” Drumknott said hurriedly. “You needn’t—"

“Yes, dear boy, I know,” Ezra said slowly, not looking away from him, and Drumknott couldn’t shake the sensation as the hairs rose on the back of his neck. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation: he knew what it felt like, to be made, when you were meant to be in hiding. “Anthony has a plant for your husband. Feeling alright, are you?” It was a very pointed question.

“Just a little under the weather, that’s all,” Drumknott said smoothly, putting a little thickness into his voice as he said so, and rubbing at the side of one of his eyes. “Havelock’s in the greenhouse.”

“I see,” Ezra said. “Excited for Esmerelda’s visit tomorrow?”

“I don’t know if excited is the word,” Drumknott said. “ _Anticipant_ , maybe.”

Ezra laughed. It was without humour, but his posture remained outwardly affable and warm. He hadn’t blinked once, he was so concentrated on Drumknott’s face, and Drumknott leaned to look past him, at his partner as he made his way up the path, holding a very leafy potted plant in his arms.

“Anthony, dear,” Ezra said, reaching back and all but snatching the plant from Anthony’s arms. “Doesn’t Rufus look under the weather?”

“What?” Anthony asked, and then he turned to look at Drumknott. His body shifted, and he reached up, dragging down his sunglasses to look at Drumknott with a more focused gaze. Anthony always wore sunglasses – he had some nasty eye condition called coloboma, and had to be careful about how much light he let into his eyes.

Drumknott didn’t stiffen under the snake-eyed gaze, but painted an expression of innocent perplexity on his face, glancing between the both of them. “What?” he asked. “Something funny in my _aura_ , Anthony?”

“Something like that,” Anthony said. “You feeling alright, Rufus?”

“Yes, _fine_ ,” Drumknott said. “Just a little ill, like I said. Listen, why don’t you two walk straight through to the greenhouse? I just have an errand to run.”

“I can give you a lift, if you like,” Anthony said immediately[5].

“No, thank you, I’ll cycle.”

“At this time of night?” Ezra asked.

“Ezra, it’s seven o’clock. I think I’ll survive.”

He stepped neatly past them, making his way down to his bike, which was kept in a neat shed in their front garden, unlocking it. He felt their gazes on him, but he pretended not to notice, and only waved at them politely once he had his helmet on his head and his trousers clipped away from his shoes.

“You haven’t got your coat,” Anthony called from the doorstep. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had one eyebrow raised in wry expectation.

Drumknott smiled. “Do I really need one, do you think? I’m only nipping out quickly, and it’s such a mild night.”

Ezra frowned. Anthony smirked.

“See you in a minute,” Drumknott said lightly, and he prayed to Blind Io that Rufus’ muscle memory would let him ride a bicycle as easily as he hoped it would. Of course, here, on Earth, Blind Io couldn’t hear him, but the ride was smooth enough nonetheless.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

He chained his bicycle up outside U Block, which housed the majority of the Physics faculty, and adjoined the main block of laboratories on the university campus. Ridcully, in this universe, was the Head of the Physics department here at the university, and—

“Rufus?”

Drumknott turned his head at the soft, gentle voice, and he felt his heart drop out of his chest.

He had begun attending the Library regularly at Unseen University when he’d been about seven years old. He’d gone to a few different libraries within Ankh-Morpork before he’d settled on that one, and he’d liked it best, had preferred the peculiar energy within the Library proper.

He remembered the Librarian. He’d met him the first time when he’d been about six, and he remembered what he’d been like when Drumknott was seven and eight. He hadn’t been the _Librarian_ then. He’d been Horace Worblehat, a soft-spoken, quiet man with a terrible penchant for gambling – he’d been shy, with a voice like molten honey, but he’d always been so gentle with Drumknott, so delicately paternal. Several times, he’d patched Drumknott up when Drumknott had some visible mark or sensitivity, and spoken to him about the books in the Library.

He’d said that Drumknott had a librarian’s air, that he’d be a very good librarian one day, or perhaps a clerk.

It had been one thing, seeing the photographs in Rufus and Havelock’s wedding album. It was another, seeing his face now, seeing his dark red suit, his ridiculous, red angora wool scarf.

“Horace,” Drumknott said, surprised by the sudden crack in his own voice. This was Horace Worblehat. This was Horace Worblehat, the sweet man who’d put balm on his bruises, and smiled at him, and listened when a little Drumknott, had wittered on about what he knew about tea, and patiently explained referencing systems to him, and—

This was _him_.

“Are you alright?” Doctor Worblehat asked, stepping closer and gently touching his shoulder, and Drumknott stared at his face, which was not lined with dark, orange-red hair. It was… There was stubble on the face, yes, something that was almost a beard, and thick spectacles. He wore a red flat cap, to hide his bald spot, and the wispy red hair sort of blended into it. “Rufus?”

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “Yes, I’m… I just had to come in and ask Mustrum a favour, in his… in his office. That’s all.”

“A favour?” the Librarian repeated, frowning.

“Esmerelda Weatherwax is visiting tomorrow,” Drumknott said. The Librarian smiled, and Drumknott was surprised by how much it stung to see the soft shift of his lips, the _warmth_ in his expression. The Librarian at home, of course, had expressions, but they weren’t the same – he was an orangutan, and he _preferred_ being an orangutan, but… He’d _missed_ Horace Worblehat, Drumknott realised. He’d _missed_ him.

“Ah,” the Librarian murmured. “I see. Well, do call in sometime later this week, hm? We’ve got an exhibit on about 20th century cryptography in the university library at the moment – just up Havelock’s street.”

“Oh,” Drumknott said. “Yes, of course. He’s reading a book about the Bletchley Circle at the moment, he’d like that.” His voice sounded wooden even to his own ears. He’d never thought he’d see this face again. He thought about it, sometimes, in a distant sort of way, was vaguely melancholy about it, but the Librarian was still _there_. He was still gentle, had still patched Drumknott up, still explained things, but it was—

It was different.

Not _worse_. Not better. Just different. And he missed… _This_.

“Are you alright?” the Librarian asked again, gently touching Drumknott’s shoulder once again. The hand wasn’t remotely leathery, nor any larger than a human hand. It was gentle, and uncalloused, and Drumknott felt, uncharacteristically, like he might burst into tears.

“Yes,” Drumknott lied. “Yes, just, I missed you. That’s all.”

“Oh,” the Librarian said softly, and he dragged Drumknott closer. Drumknott froze in his arms as the Librarian hugged him, and then he relaxed, feeling the older man gently pat his back, felt him kiss Drumknott’s temple. It was… _Paternal_. Easily paternal, easily, and so gentle, so— “You can always drop in, you know. Were you arguing with Havelock again?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Drumknott said hurriedly, feeling himself swallow. “Just, I don’t know. Going through old photos. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That’s alright,” the Librarian murmured, and patted his back, taking a step away. “You know you can always drop in, alright? Call me, if you need to.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “Thank you, Horace, I’ll, um, I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Alright,” Horace said, and Drumknott watched after him as he went. Why should this universe affect him so much? He wants to go _home_. He wants to go home, and wake up in the real world, with _his_ Vetinari, and _his_ Librarian, and his home, his people, his…

Exhaling, Drumknott ascended the stairs and into the U Block, going up the stairs and heading toward Ridcully’s office. It was similar to the halls of UU, he felt. There were the same strange noticeboard of mixed up posters and advertisements and outdated guest lecture promotions, the strange winding corridors, so many offices…

He knocked on the familiar door.

“Hm, what? Come in, come in! Funny time of night to be knoc— Rufus!”

“Hello, Mustrum,” Drumknott said, stepping inside. It was astoundingly similar to Ridcully’s own office, with the same variety of knick-knacks, football scarves, stacked books and clothes… The main difference, of course, was the treadmill to the side of the room, and Drumknott’s lip twitched as Ridcully stood up from his desk. He was wearing a tracksuit, although Drumknott noticed he did _have_ a proper shirt and trousers hung on the back of his office door.

“What’s happening, hm? You feeling alright, you need—”

“I _do_ need something,” Drumknott said. “I’m looking for one of your students. Or, at least, I think he’s one of your students. Henry Whittle?”

“Whittle?” Ridcully repeated, crossing his arms over his chest and looking very thoughtful. He squinted slightly, touching his beard, which was _much_ shorter than his beard in the real world, and was more just scruff. “Doesn’t ring a bell. What does he look like?”

“What about Horace Dripp?” Drumknott asked.

“Oh, _Dripp_ ,” Ridcully said, nodding his head. “Yes, he’s one of our PhDs in Nuclear Physics – works with Doctor Rjinswand. Funny little chap – very annoying voice, but he’s a good tutor, apparently. _Oh_ , Whittle, is he, uh, a handsome young lad? Little younger than Dripp, dark hair? Bit boring?”

“That’s right,” Drumknott said.

“The boyfriend,” Ridcully said wisely.

“Yes,” Drumknott agreed. “Do they live on campus?”

“No, no, I don’t think so,” Ridcully said. “No, they have a… Stibbons!” He knocked hard on the wall, and Drumknott winced, but Ridcully didn’t notice[6]. Drumknott listened for the footsteps in the corridor, and then the door opened, revealing a very frazzled young physicist in a pale red shirt. “Were you asleep, Stibbons?”

“ _No_ ,” Ponder Stibbons said. It was, Drumknott supposed, a lie. His hair was a mess around his head, and he was reaching up under his glasses to rub at his eye. “What is it, Mustrum?”

“Rufus here,”

“Hello, Rufus.”

“Hello, Ponder.”

“Wants Horace Dripp.”

“What?”

“He left something at the library this week,” Drumknott lied smoothly. “I’d leave it here, but, ah,” he cleared his throat. He had always been rather good at lying, and his time in the Patrician’s office had only made him better at it. The trick of getting people to do as you wanted them to, much of the time, was in making them uncomfortable. He _knew_ how to make people uncomfortable. “I really oughtn’t. Gift for his boyfriend, I think.”

“A gift, for…?” Ponder repeated, and Ridcully gave him a significant look. “ _Oh_ ,” Ponder said, a ruddy flush burning on his cheeks. “Oh, right. Erm… I’ve got his address, Rufus, one moment…”

He disappeared from the room, and Drumknott looked to Ridcully. “Esmerelda’s in town tomorrow. She’s joining us for dinner, but she’s here for a few days.” He remembered, now. _This_ Ridcully had something going on with Esmerelda, though what it was, exactly, Rufus didn’t know, and Havelock didn’t care to.

Ridcully stared at him. “Oh?” he said, reaching up and, apparently subconsciously, awkwardly combing back his messy hair with his hands. “Is she?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Well. Yes. Good! Good. Er. Yes.” He coughed, and rather hurriedly grabbed for his phone. Drumknott looked back to Ponder as he came in with the address.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

He’d have to go tomorrow.

He had several texts on his phone[7] from Havelock, in quick succession.

**_7:35 –_ ** _Where did you go?_

**_7:50 –_ ** _Please text back ASAP. Quite worried._

**_8:15_ ** _– Hello?_

“Are you _mad_?” Havelock hissed when he answered the phone, and Drumknott presses his lips together. “Ezra said you talked to him and just ran off the doorstep and onto your bike. Where did you even go? You didn’t even tell them where you were _going_ , I had no idea, you weren’t responding to my—”

“My phone was on silent,” Drumknott said. “Sorry for worrying you. I was just at the university.”

“The uni— For God’s sake, _why_?”

“I just needed the fresh air, and I wanted to cycle somewhere. Needed to get out of the house. Look, I’ll come home now. Are Ezra and Anthony still there?”

“Of course.”

“Alright,” Drumknott muttered. “Listen, um— I feel a little ill, still, when I come back, I think I’m just going to go straight to bed.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, I don’t know if I could keep anything down, I just—”

“Anthony will come and get you. Leave your bike there.”

“No, Havelock, there’s no need, I—”

“ _Rufus_.”

His voice was so thick with anxiety that, for a moment, Drumknott almost felt annoyed. _Vetinari_ would never allow so much emotion to show in his voice, not ever. His voice wouldn’t sound tight and frenetic, on the verge of tears: his voice would be clear and clean and neatly cut. He wasn’t _weak_ , like this one was.

Drumknott thought that, and immediately, felt a vague sense of guilt for the lack of charity in it.

“Alright,” he said quietly. “I’m near to the U Block.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Anthony Crowley drove a Bentley. It was a nice car, if you were into cars, which Rufus was, albeit not as much as he was into trains. He had tricked it out with a few modern things – he had a radio with an AUX connection, as well as a USB for his phone, although he and Ezra still had various CDs crammed into the sides of the doors. Despite how nicely kept his car was, and how it had most of its original fittings[8], he did not drive very carefully. Oh, no.

A.J. Crowley drove like a _demon_ , and even as one who loved engines, Drumknott spent a lot of the time in the vehicle with his hands braced hard against the dashboard, his head bowed slightly.

This was in-keeping with Rufus’ behaviour enough that Anthony didn’t comment on it.

He did say, in a casual, friendly voice, “So, who are you, then?”

“Rufus Drumknott?” Drumknott replied.

“Hm. Doesn’t _feel_ like a lie. Doesn’t taste like one.”

“For God’s sake, Anthony, I know you and Ezra go in for that spiritual nonsense of auras and tarot and whatnot, but I’m really _not_ —”

“And you’ve got such a good sense of what he thinks, what he feels,” Anthony continued, almost as if he didn’t hear him. He had his sunglasses on, making it impossible to tell if he had his eyes on the road. Probably not. “It’s a very good replica.”

“ _Anthony_ —”

“Who are you? That’s all I want to know. Well. That, and what you’ve done with him.”

“Done with whom?”

“With Rufus.”

“ _I’m_ Rufus.”

“You know, you’re very lucky it’s _me_ you’re dealing with. Ezra may look sssoft, but he’s a lot harder on this sort of ssstuff than I am.”

“Your lisp came out,” Drumknott muttered.

“No need to be _nasssty_.”

“Isn’t there? Anthony, I feel horrible. I felt sick, I didn’t want to worry anybody, I went for a bike ride to see if some exercise helped. It didn’t. Now, you’re… What, accusing me of being some sort of imposter?” Drumknott’s stomach lurched on a particularly abrupt turn on the road, and he screwed his eyes very tightly shut. “What, do you think I’m _possessed_? That I’m some sort of dybbuk?”

“No,” Anthony said thoughtfully. “No, I know you’re not _possessed_.”

“Oh, I suppose you can sense that,” Drumknott mumbled, although he couldn’t help thinking of women like Mrs Cake, or the way that wizards and witches could somehow sense things on the air. Was it like that? Was that what this was?

“Mmm, yeah, that’s sort of it, actually.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Drumknott muttered.

“Try me.”

“My name is Rufus Drumknott,” he said slowly, feeling like he was mad – but then again, the car was going so fast that he felt like he’d left his stomach and brain at the past junction, and he was currently feeling both empty and dizzy. He wished the damned thing was on _tracks_. “And I work for Lord Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, on the Disc, which is on the back of four elephants, which is on the back of Great A’Tuin, the world turtle. In a very _awkward_ mix-up, I’m currently sharing a consciousness with my equivalent from _this_ world, Earth. Rest _assured_ , Anthony, I am doing my best to fix the matter as soon and as best as I am able.”

The Bentley came to a stop, and Drumknott stared, uncomprehending, as a pair of double yellow lines… _moved_. They just moved, sharply and politely, out of the way of the car. Alright. So, Ezra and Anthony were absolutely wizards, or witches, or sourcerers, or… something. Drumknott frowned, and slowly turned to look at Anthony, who seemed to be considering what he’d said.

“Oh,” Anthony murmured, looking thoughtful. “Well. That’s alright, then, I think. Been at it long?”

“A few weeks.”

“Got a solution?”

“I… _think_ so. I’m going to pursue it tomorrow.”

“You didn’t hurt the real Rufus?” Anthony asked.

“No, no, not at all,” Drumknott said. “It feels… I expect it’ll feel very odd for him, once I’m gone, but it’s sort of like a dream. I don’t… I really am _not_ doing this by choice. How did you know—”

“Ooh, let’s not get bogged down with unimportant questions, not-Rufus,” Anthony said brightly, and he stepped out of the car.  “Come on. Rufus’ husband is going to slap you silly.”

“Yes,” Drumknott said. “I know.”

“He thought you’d probably been kidnapped, or killed. You know, I suppose, that that’s a genuine threat in this universe.”

“It’s more of a threat in mine,” Drumknott muttered, closing the door.

“ _Really_? What’s your universe li—”

“Don’t get bogged down with unimportant questions, _Anthony_ ,” Drumknott said.

Anthony grinned, showing teeth that were just a little too sharp to be human, although Drumknott didn’t think Rufus had ever noticed before. “Oh, _you_ ,” he murmured, sounding delighted. “You are just _fun_ , aren’t you? Do you really feel sick?”

“I didn’t before I got in your car,” Drumknott mumbled, and Anthony laughed, leaning in and patting his back as they walked up the garden path.

“That’s alright. Rufus always looks greener. Things always are, on the other side, and all that.”

“I think that refers to grass.”

“Grass, librarians, what’s the difference?” Anthony pushed the door open, and Drumknott only winced slightly when Havelock dragged him into his arms, cradling him tightly, laying kisses on the top of his head. Vetinari wasn’t like this, when he thought Drumknott had been in danger. He was quieter, sterner, sharper. He asked what hurt, if anything, focused on the _pragmatics_ , although he was not unkind.

 _But then_ , Drumknott’s mind said, in a very nasty manner, _you aren’t involved like Rufus and Havelock are, are you?_

“What were you _thinking_?” Havelock hissed, and Drumknott exhaled.

“I wasn’t. I was sick, and anxious, and tired. That’s all.”

“Stupid, and _foolhardy_ , I can’t believe you—”

“Can I sit down?” Drumknott asked.

Havelock stopped in his tracks, and his fingers dragged through Drumknott’s hair, cupping the back of his head. Drumknott took in the expression on his face, deep set worry, anger… And adoration. Complete, desperate adoration.

He’d never seen that in Vetinari’s face before.

Not even as the little flicker of a microexpression. Not ever.

“Yes,” Havelock said, his voice softening. “Yes, luce dei miei occhi, of course, come— Come sit down. Do you want some tea?”

And that wasn’t like Vetinari either.

And why should it be?

Why should it be?

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott woke after lying down with Havelock, Bertie in between them in the bed. He’d calmed down considerably, and Ezra had brought them each tea, but the talk had gone on for hours upon hours, even after Ezra and Anthony had cheerfully left. Anthony had explained things to him, Drumknott thought, although he didn’t know if that was good or not. If they were anything like Disc wizards, they would likely feel the need to interfere, and _that_ …

That, he didn’t want.

But, by _Io_ , Havelock had just… Talked. About his _feelings_. For hours, and hours, it had been a torrent, and by the end of it, Drumknott had felt so exhausted, trying to sleep while he just kept talking, and now, he felt like he’d gotten next-to-no rest at all.

There was a knock on his bedroom door, and he opened it, looking blearily at the figure in the doorway. His head was _thrumming_ with a headache, and he hoped it wasn’t due to their interference, he _hoped_ —

Halton Juniper, one of the Dark Clerks, stood with Mr Lockheed at one of his shoulders, and Vetinari at the other.

“Are you alright, Mr Drumknott?” Juniper asked.

“Yes,” Drumknott said groggily. “Why do you ask?”

“Mr Drumknott,” Vetinari said silkily, but with a slight tension to his voice that was almost infinitesimal, and yet comforting in its subtlety, “it is very nearly seven o’clock.”

“Oh,” Drumknott said. “Oh, no.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vetinari sat at the small chair at Drumknott’s desk, watching him as he drank his tea, one selected for its analgesic quality. He was, Vetinari noted, dressed in very sensible, blue-flannel pyjamas that were just a little tight on him, and Vetinari could see the shape of his arms, his shoulders, the slight roundness at his belly.

He was aware of the discomfort in his stomach, of the vague anxiety. He’d let it for an hour after the acceptable, but after that—

Perhaps he oughtn’t have left it _this_ long. It wasn’t like Drumknott to sleep in, and now, looking at him…

He looked bleary and slightly out of it, looked an utter _mess_.

Vetinari wished he could do something. He wished he could reach out, touch him, stroke his cheek, his hair, wished… Did the Havelock in this _other_ universe do that, he wondered? This version of himself, where he was a _husband_ , where he was married, and to Drumknott, how did that work?

“I’m sorry,” Drumknott said.

“You needn’t be,” Vetinari murmured. “This wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

Drumknott sighed, standing from his bed, and Vetinari stood as well, reaching for his dressing gown before Drumknott could, and holding it out for him. Drumknott hesitated for a moment, but then he slid his arms into the sleeves, and he buttoned up the front. Vetinari considered, for just a second, reaching out and doing the buttons up for him – he’d done that for his aunt, when he’d been a young man, helped her with her coats, or her more complicated dress fastenings. It had always felt like such an easy form of affection, felt so…

He reached out, flicking an imaginary piece of lint from Drumknott’s shoulder, just for the excuse to touch him: Drumknott, distracted, leaned right into the touch, and Vetinari felt his eyes widen in surprise.

Drumknott stiffened, and then took a stumbling step back, shaking his head.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, rubbing at his head. His cheeks burned with a red flush. “Sorry.”

“There is no need, I’m sure,” Vetinari murmured. “What happened in the dream?”

“I want this to be _over_ ,” Drumknott said, plaintively, and he sat down heavily on the bed, putting his head in his hands. Vetinari raised his chin slightly, looking down at his clerk, and he felt in his chest a quiet pang of sympathy. “I’m so _tired_ , sir, I just… I can’t keep _doing_ this. I didn’t even get a chance to find Dripp, because of all this emotional _nonsense_ …”

Vetinari said nothing for a little while, watching as Drumknott sighed heavily, dragging his hair back from his face.

“One might hope, Mr Drumknott,” he said finally, “that your troubles will soon be at an end.”

To his surprise, Drumknott looked up at him, and smiled. “It’s a relief to hear you say that,” he muttered.

“Why?” Vetinari asked, despite himself.

“The other you just had a lot of… _emotions_. Very— Very loud, very expressive emotions. It’s exhausting.”

“I see,” Vetinari said. A part of him triumphed at the very idea that _this_ Vetinari, this similar component from another world, should be so inferior to him, that Drumknott should be so pleased to have _him_ instead. A husband, at that, one that _ought_ be more appealing, and yet apparently was not. And on the other hand—

He couldn’t consider this. He couldn’t possibly. He couldn’t.

“I have been… deceitful,” Drumknott mumbled.

“I know,” Vetinari said. Drumknott sighed.

“Yes,” he said, defeatedly. “I thought perhaps you might.”

“I understand why you didn’t say it outright,” Vetinari said cleanly. “I will hardly punish you for wishing to avoid what, no doubt, you expected would be embarrassing for us both. I would remind you, Mr Drumknott, that it is a different world entirely: I can hardly punish you for its contents.”

“I don’t want to tell the wizards,” Drumknott said. “They will read something salacious into our own dynamic.”

“Quite,” Vetinari agreed.

Drumknott looked up from his tea, and he met Vetinari’s gaze. Vetinari looked at his eyes, at their soft, hazel-flecked brown, at the slight downturn of his tired lips. Drumknott’s expression revealed very little; indeed, Vetinari’s own revealed about as much.

“Can I tell you something, my lord?” Drumknott asked, in a very small voice that wavered, just slightly. It struck Vetinari that it was a very intimate thing to ask, and he hesitated.

“Of course,” Vetinari said.

“I know,” Drumknott said, very slowly, “that the work that we do is lonely, and that… that when you are gone, and when I am gone, very little will be made of the good things we’ve done. Very little will be remembered of your… beneficence, in favour of thinking of you as a monster of some kind, easy to criticise. But— But _I_ think, my lord, that you are very noble, and I feel very honoured to serve at your side. There’s no point to his life. The other Drumknott, I mean. He doesn’t— He doesn’t serve a higher cause, he doesn’t…” Drumknott trailed off, letting out a quiet groan, and clutching the side of his head.

“You oughtn’t work today,” Vetinari said softly. In his chest, he felt a burst of warmth, as if a ray of sunshine was shining directly on his heart, and heating him from within. It felt _good_. And still, he was _worried_ , and anxious, but Drumknott was _glad_ , honoured, to serve by his side.

“But I don’t think I can rest,” Drumknott pointed out. “Because I can’t sleep.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“I do have some concern, Drumknott, for your health,” Vetinari murmured, “but I fear you have defeated me with this line of reasoning. Get dressed, I think, and merely avoid anything especially strenuous.”

Drumknott was smiling again, softly, this time: he was thinking about how _very_ different this Vetinari’s show of concern was from Havelock’s, and how comforting that was. Even with his head aching, his mouth dry, his stomach roiling with nausea, _there_ was a note of steadfast, comforting _correctness_.

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said, still smiling.

Vetinari gave a slightly terse nod of his head, and he stepped from Drumknott’s room.

On each side of the door, they thought, overwhelmingly, of one another, for exactly ten seconds. Then, Drumknott made to get dressed, and Vetinari stepped down the corridor toward the Oblong Office.

 

[1] As, indeed, although Drumknott was unwilling to note it, he had admitted in purchasing a mug calling him the _best_ “boss”.

[2] Wendy had voiced, on multiple occasions, her distaste in Drumknott’s joining only the Patrician’s _staff_ , so perhaps this feud-inspiring disapproval did not surprise him as much as it would have.

[3] Suffice it to say, leopard print, feathers, and spats were _all_ present.

[4] Who, in that particular photo, was flirting with an increasingly nervous Ponder Stibbons.

[5] _Almost_ immediately. He said it the second after Ezra stepped on his foot, but Drumknott pretended not to notice this.

[6] He did. He just didn’t bother to make it clear he noticed things when he wasn’t planning to change his behaviour.

[7] _Rufus_ Drumknott, entirely opposed to much modern technology, grudgingly kept a rather old Nokia, but would not consent to taking up a smart phone, as his husband had.

[8] For example, it lacked _seatbelts_.


	6. Chapter 6

Drumknott’s efficiency was not at all impacted by his headache.

Then again, Vetinari hardly expected it to be. Drumknott was unfailingly focused upon his duties: this was at the very core of his nature. He was dutiful, and focused, and – to use the word from Drumknott’s own lexicon, still lingering within Vetinari’s mind, bouncing off the inner walls of his skull and catching again and again upon his focus – _noble_.

He thought of Henry Whittle, lying in his bed in the Infirmary, and felt the barest sense of an uncomfortable emotion, one he did not especially like to linger on, and one that he was unaccustomed to feeling.

Havelock Vetinari put a lot of stock into feeling in control.

Ever since he had been twelve years old, and had decided the best way to assist the people of Ankh-Morpork would be in ascending to be their Patrician, to remove Lord Winder (and then, of course, Mad Snapcase, having made the foolish contribution to his being set there) from his seat, and take up the mantle himself, he had known control was _crucial_. It did not matter, of course, if you were not truly in control of everything, so long as you maintained the appearance, but—

If possible, it was _ideal_ to be in control.

He was in control of a great many things, in fact. His fingers were wrapped around all manner of carefully laid strings throughout the city: he could conduct a guild meeting like an orchestra, if he needed to, simply with the right subtle pressures, the correct little pulls; there are hundreds upon hundreds of people who had no idea how easily he had wrapped them about his fingers; there were decisions made in the city every day, with no realisation as to _precisely_ how much they met with the Patrician’s approval. Even those groups and cells dedicated to his own destruction, he had mostly organised and brought about himself – it was so good, he thought, to cultivate these things in the best way they might be.

In this situation, with Drumknott, he did _not_ have control.

It was quite possible that Drumknott would die; indeed, it was possible again that he would _not_ die, but would be struck down into one of these comas, as Henry Whittle had. And hadn’t Drumknott been _most_ correct this morning, in noting that Lord Vetinari would be remembered as a tyrant, as a monster?

He had not said – although Vetinari knew he knew this – that _he_ would not be remembered at all.

Were he to die this very day, Vetinari doubted it would be more than a note on one of the middle pages on the paper. A little more than an obituary – as unobtrusive as Drumknott tried his best to be, he was still a figure in the public eye – but nothing much. He did not like, even, for people to pay attention to him, was uncomfortable with people looking to him unless he was managing a project or auditing a system, and yet, it rankled.

Drumknott was one of the most hard-working young men in the city.

And not for any particular _reason_ as to personal gain: he didn’t do it because he wanted money. His pay was certainly higher than most of the other Palace staff, but it didn’t come close to the senior workers in the Royal Mint, and Drumknott would do very well there indeed. He didn’t do it because he expected recognition, or some heroic fame, later on. He had _power_ , certainly, but he very rarely seemed to feel the desire to use it, unless it was in the pursuit of helping someone else.

And if he died…

It wasn’t to say that no one would notice. People would notice.

Rosemary Palm would give him her condolences. Ridcully and the wizards, _they_ would notice, perhaps would send some flowers to Drumknott’s funeral. His sister, of course, and her husband, their children. The Librarian. The Palace staff, and some of the railway men. Some of the other guild heads would notice, would perhaps make mention of it.

Almost none of those people would attend a _funeral_. Certainly, most of their lives would be unaffected by it – they’d hardly grieve.

And Vetinari, would he grieve?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

He stepped into the doorway of Drumknott’s office, and Drumknott didn’t turn to look at him, but lifted his head slightly, to make it clear he was listening. He was rifling through one of the filing cabinets, picking through individual files.

He looked…

Not handsome.

No, Drumknott wasn’t handsome. He had a small body, compact, and there was more muscle and fat on it than one would expect, looking at his loose clothes and his oversized spectacles, but he was still _portable_ , compared to many men. His features were almost calculatedly bland and unobtrusive: his nose seemed too hard and angular for the rest of his face, which was soft and round; his gaze could be very severe indeed, when he wanted it to be, but his eyes were naturally rather soft; he had round cheeks that blushed easily, and a small, stout chin. But there was the way he held himself: this was the thing, Vetinari supposed, that occasionally led him to distraction. He conducted himself with stiff, neat grace, his movements deliberate, his hands never straying from where he _meant_ them to be, his posture picture-perfect.

There was a part of Vetinari – one he ordinarily kept in a locked box, out of sight and out of mind – that rather wanted to rip that composure away from him, and see what happened. There was another part of him, equally off-limits, that felt an instinct to reach out and _touch_.

He didn’t.

“Ready to walk the dog?” he asked, and Drumknott glanced away from the filing cabinet, looking at him.

“It’s a bit early,” he murmured. “Twenty-three minutes past three. We ordinarily don’t until at least four.”

“And yet, Mr Drumknott, I feel you could do with the fresh air.”

“I could, sir,” Drumknott allowed, with a neat nod of his head, and he drew forth the file, setting it on his desk as he reached for his coat and his gloves, drawing them on. This was a part of their daily routine, to walk the dog together. It was… _pleasant_. Vetinari often liked to work outside, when it was possible, although this was a rather chilly March thus far: walking the dog was pleasant, however, even when it was raining, and Mr Fusspot refused to step out from beneath their shared umbrella.

“In the city, today,” Vetinari said. “I tire of the clean, fresh air in the Palace Gardens.”

Drumknott’s lip twitched. “Yes, sir,” he agreed.

“Does my counterpart have a dog?” Vetinari asked.

“Yes, sir,” Drumknott said, closing the door to his office behind him and locking it with a neat click before they moved to the Oblong Office. As Vetinari drew on his own coat, Drumknott neatly clipped the leash to Mr Fusspot’s collar, even as the animal groaned a complaint at being expected to put in some exercise. “A long-eared little spaniel. His name is Bertram Wooster, after a literary character of the same name. He’s quite a stupid dog, rather hyperactive.”

“I see.”

“We might walk to the UU campus and back,” Drumknott suggested as he stood to his feet. “I’ve my report from last night. No sense sending a junior clerk to do it if we’re walking that way anyway.”

“Alright,” Vetinari murmured. “Are you frightened?”

There was a moment’s silence as Vetinari watched his clerk for a response. Drumknott’s expression was quite neutral as he considered the question, winding Mr Fusspot’s lead slowly about his fingers, so that the dog didn’t have too much slack[1].

“I don’t believe so, sir,” Drumknott said as Vetinari stepped closer, that he might reach for his own clothes on the shelf behind him. “I’m merely tired, and should like for this ordeal to be at an end.”

“I thought perhaps that it might be… _pleasurable_ ,” Vetinari said quietly. “In its own manner. You are not afforded, in my office, the time for— For marriage, for romances. In future—”

“In future, I will continue my work as usual, sir,” Drumknott said firmly. “I could not bear to waste my life on unimportant things. As you say, it is another world, another universe: I should not like to base my life on that which happens there.” He let out a hiss of noise, then, his eyes fluttering closed, and he touched the edge of his temple.

Vetinari sighed.

There was no arguing, he had discovered, with Drumknott, when he was entrenched in his position.

It was a trait they rather shared.

Reaching forward for his gloves, he put his hand past Drumknott’s face, and Drumknott’s hand touched against the back of his palm. For just a moment, Vetinari stood, quite frozen, with his palm against Drumknott’s face, and he stared, awestruck, as Drumknott turned his head, and laid a kiss upon the palm.

Drumknott’s lips were warm, though slightly chapped, and Vetinari’s heart felt as if it had stopped in his chest.

“Lord Vetinari,” he said softly, in a slightly tremulous voice. When his eyes opened, they were slightly unfocused, and his lips were parted. He couldn’t tear his hand away from the warm softness of Drumknott’s cheek, couldn’t bring himself to pull away from the warmth of Drumknott’s skin, the gentle patter of his heartbeat beneath the flesh. He hadn’t touched another man like this in decades, and even then—

“Drumknott?”

“I’m very sorry, my lord,” Drumknott said, very thickly, as if he was struggling to make his tongue move, “but I think I’m going to fall.”

Vetinari had him almost before he crumpled, catching him under his arms and letting Mr Fusspot’s lead fall to the ground between them, the dog puzzled and wagging his tail nervously. “Drumknott?” Vetinari asked, patting his clerk’s cheek to see if it would rouse him, but it didn’t: Drumknott’s body lolled in his arms, limp as if in sleep, and Vetinari could feel his soft breathing against his arm.

It felt intimate beyond measure, to be holding him like this, and he almost felt _embarrassed_ , that he should see the clerk like this, that he should—

No.

No.

Gently laying Drumknott down on the chaise long, he called for Mr Lockheed and Mr Juniper to come back up to the Oblong Office, and for Doctor Lawn to be sent to the UU campus, tout de suite. They would ride in the carriage to the university itself, and—

He looked to Drumknott, his head laid on the leather end of the chaise long, his jaw slack.

He’d kissed Vetinari’s hand.

 _Kissed_ it.

He’d—

Vetinari drew his fingers over the patch of skin, and he felt so much that it could scarcely be categorised, _felt_ …

And felt.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott woke in Rufus’ bed, and he turned his head slowly to the side.

Havelock was asleep beside him, his breathing slow and even, and Drumknott carefully slipped from bed, taking his phone up from the bedside table and padding silently from the bedroom. Vetinari, of course, would have noticed, but Havelock barely stirred in his sleep as his partner slowly made his way down the stairs. Bertie padded after him, giving him a doleful, sleepy look, as if to ask where they might be going at this time of night, but when Drumknott patted the armchair, he jumped up and went back to sleep there instead.

Drumknott tapped through his contacts on the phone, dialling one of them, and he held the receiver up to his ear.

It wasn’t even two in the morning.

“Hi there, Rufus,” Anthony said. Drumknott could hear the knowing smile in his voice.

“Give the phone to Ezra,” he said, slightly stiffly.

There was the sound of a phone being passed from one hand to another, well-manicured one. A sheepish silence resounded.

“What,” Drumknott asked, very slowly, and very quietly, “did you do?”

“Ah,” Ezra said. “Well.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Vetinari watched as Mr Lockheed gently laid Drumknott down on the bed beside Whittle, quickly setting about removing his glasses and putting them aside, as well as unlacing his shoes and setting those neatly beside the bed, on the floor. Drumknott didn’t so much as stir, his breathing slow and even as he slept, his head lolled slightly to the side[2], and Vetinari turned his head to look at Ridcully as he entered the room.

Ridcully startled at the look on his face. It was no different, in essence, from any of Vetinari’s other blank expressions, but there was some additional coldness in his eyes, and Ridcully steeled himself, looking to Drumknott where he laid on the bed. Dripp was leaning forward in his seat, looking up from the book he’d been reading, and Ridcully watched one of his hands loosely tangle with Whittle’s on the bed.

Whittle didn’t move.

“Here,” Vetinari murmured, and he held out the notes from the night previous, between two fingers.

_Dream #7 (Sat 12 th March)_

  * _Work day proceeded as usual._
  * _Went through photo album for valuable notes. None to be seen, although recognised counterparts of, as well as others: Rosemary Palm, Ridcully & Senior Wizards, D. Lockheed, etc._
  * _Was visited by Ezra Fell and Anthony J. Crowley, two friends of husband and I. They are wizards, or some sort of Earth equivalent: they knew immediately that I was not their Rufus Drumknott, although when I explained my situation to Mr Crowley, and advised that I had it under control, he said that was alright._
    * _Suspect that Mr Fell, a “control freak” (Mr Crowley’s phrasing) of no small proportions, may intervene tomorrow._
  * _Saw the Librarian at the university. Still human. Nice man._
  * _Met with equivalent of Ridcully and Stibbons, and obtained address for Horace Dripp and Henry Whittle, who cohabitate. Will visit them tomorrow._
  * _Didn’t get to bed until later than usual._



“The last element,” Vetinari said quietly, “meant that he awoke later this morning, I believe. He had a headache once again, and he just collapsed in my office, just before we were due to walk here. This… _wizard_. Ezra Fell. Do you know the name?”

“No,” Ridcully muttered, handing the notes to be passed amongst the other wizards. “Where’s— Rincewind! Do we have a Doctor Fell, or a Crowley on the staff?”

“No,” Rincewind said, startling, as he’d only just been entering the room. “Don’t think so.”

“Go ask Hix.”

Immediately, Rincewind turned on his heel, and left the infirmary again.

“Oh, are all you fellows here again?” asked Matron anxiously, and then she saw Drumknott on the bed, and began to see to him, taking his pulse and his temperature.

Ridcully looked to Vetinari’s feet. Sitting beside his ankle, and looking blandly about the room with an expression of canine curiosity, was Mr Fusspot, the Patrician’s dog. It was, Ridcully felt, a damn sight better than the last one, who had smelled awful. When Matron came away from Drumknott’s bed, the dog, unheeding of the way the lead in Vetinari’s hand strangled its neck, scrambled across the floor until Vetinari let go, and then it leapt up onto Drumknott’s bed.

Or, it tried to.

What in fact happened was that it manfully made the leap, hit the side of the mattress with is crushed-in face, and landed hard on the floor with a soft yip.

“Mr Lockheed,” Vetinari said absently, with a wave of his hand, and Lockheed leaned down.

Gently scooping the animal up with one great hand, he unclipped the leash from its collar, and deposited the animal on the crisp, white sheets. Immediately, it wriggled closer to Mr Drumknott, squirreling into the space between his armpit and his chest, and curled into a tight ball. It did not close its eyes and go to sleep, but instead laid its chin on Drumknott’s chest, looking suspiciously at the others in the room. Mr Fusspot did not have much experience with wizards, but having lived the majority of his life in the Royal Bank, and then going onto live at the Patrician’s Palace, he had no small amount of distrust for anyone who wore especially bright and audacious clothes. Wizards, to Mr Fusspot, were a new and baffling experience[3].

“Good dog,” Vetinari said softly. “Has there been any sign of the file?”

“Er, no,” Ridcully muttered. “Dean! Dean!”

“Oh, yes,” the Dean said, clapping his hands together, and looking nervously at Vetinari.

All of the wizards looked nervously at Vetinari, except Ridcully, who was not in the business of being nervous. They were huddled together in a little group with the Dean at their head, except for Stibbons, who was speaking quietly and seriously with Dripp. He was standing, one might note, much closer to Dripp than one could ordinarily stomach – Dripp, although still filthy, was looking better than ever, and Ridcully had been seriously considering the motions brought up at the staff meetings to ban him from practising magic altogether, if not practising magic made him so un-drippy.

“Well,” the Dean said, “it turns out that the, er, the University has sort of been… Moving the file about. We’ve been talking to the Lecturer in Animate/Inanimate Studies, and he said that the University does things like that, now and then. Just like Room XB, it’s, er, probably _trying_ to be helpful, but it doesn’t have the same sort of consciousness as we do, so its communication is, ah, abstract.”

“The thing is,” said the Bursar.

“Shut up, Bursar!” hissed the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Let him speak,” Vetinari said, and the Bursar blinked in surprise. So did the rest of the wizards.

“Well,” the Bursar said, clapping his hands together and beaming at Vetinari, who looked at him stonily, “you know, what it is, is, ah, just three octaves up, hm? Er, you know, hanging out around middle C instead of high-high C and all that. It’s tried putting it before the conductor, and that hasn’t worked, so now it just puts it on another piano. It does have a piano. Is it a piano?”

“What?” Ridcully asked, with feeling.

“You propose,” Vetinari said slowly, “that the University has placed the wayward file in a more trafficked file room, that it might be better discovered?”

“Do I?” the Bursar asked.

“I think you do,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. “Gosh. Bally well done, Bursar. That’s a rather clever thought.”

“Go and look,” Vetinari murmured, and he drew a chair to sit down beside Drumknott’s bed, sliding slowly to sit down as the Lecturer in Recent Runes manhandled the Bursar out of the Infirmary and down the stairs, the Dean and the Senior Wrangler in hot pursuit. No one, after all, wanted to be in the same room as the Patrician if it might be avoided.

This, Ridcully mused, was odd. Not that no one wanted to be around the Patrician – this was right and normal – but that the Patrician seemed to be… lingering. He had expected him to sweep in with his clerk and then sort of push off again.

He looked to Mr Lockheed, the fellow all in black, but he was looking out of the window, out over the university grounds.

“Er,” Ridcully said. Vetinari didn’t look at him. “I say, are you… staying?”

“Yes,” Vetinari said cleanly. Ridcully noted, with a discomfiting sense of symmetry, the parallel the Patrician formed with Dripp, who was sitting nervously in his chair. Dripp, of course, was holding Whittle’s hand very tightly in his own. The Patrician’s were folded in his lap. “Will that be a problem?”

“Oh, er, no, no,” Ridcully said. “Not a problem at all. Not a problem.”

He didn’t like the way young Drumknott looked like that, lying on the bed, all pale and unconscious. It was one thing, to hear about, but it was quite another, quite another indeed, to _see_ him…

“Dashed good lad,” Ridcully said.

“Pardon?” Vetinari asked.

“Dashed good lad, I said,” Ridcully said. “Met him when he was sixteen, when I was made Archchancellor. Cheeky little twit he was, too. I asked him if he wanted to be a wizard, and he said no, and I asked him why not. Do you know what he said?”

Vetinari’s gaze was fixed on his clerk’s face. “No,” he said. “Do tell me, Mustrum.”

“ _He_ said,” Ridcully said, trying to grin, although he was feeling rather less like grinning with every passing moment, “that he liked _organisation_. He said, _Archchancellor, I don’t think that magic is well-disposed to being organised_.”

“I expect it is, or that it would be,” Ponder said, scrunching up his nose, “if you could figure out how to nail it down. Or, er, staple it, in Mr Drumknott’s case.” He smiled, and to Ridcully’s surprise, so did Vetinari. It was naught more than a flicker of one thin lip, but it was there.

“Sneaky little sod,” Ridcully said.

“That he is,” Vetinari murmured.

“He’ll be alright,” Ponder said earnestly, although his fingers were tapping an anxious pattern against the side of his leg, moving rapidly in their place. “I’m sure of it.”

Ridcully said nothing.

Nor did Vetinari.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Drumknott stood very, very still in the middle of Mr Fell's bookshop, his jaw set in a line. He and Crowley were usually in between the shop and its little flat and their cottage outside of London, and he had been here before, many, many times... The energy was different, this time. Ezra and Anthony stood facing him, shoulder to shoulder: Anthony's hands were on his hips, his eyebrows raised. Ezra looked... sheepish.

"Tell me," Drumknott said lowly, "what you did."

"I, ah, well, my dear—"

"Or tell me why you did it."

"I hardly meant to—"

"Or just tell me _something_ , without making excuses."

"Tell you what," Anthony mutters, leaning in to look at Drumknott's hard expression, at the coldness in his eyes, "Rufus can't make his face do _that_."

"No," Drumknott agreed in a chilly voice. It almost reminded Ezra of his coworkers, which was rather unsettling indeed, coming from a man he knew as a librarian and a train enthusiast. "I expect he can't."

"My dear," Ezra said softly, spreading his soft, plump hands. "Do you believe in angels?"

Neither Ezra nor Anthony, it would seem, expected the strangled yell this drew from Drumknott's throat, not the way he clenched his hands into fists and stamped one small foot. He turned his head, and they watched the way he brought the knuckle of his thumb up to his teeth, pressing against them.

“Explain,” he barked out. “Now.”

“Er, well,” Ezra said, “I wasn’t really trying to do anything, I was just doing my best to see precisely what the, ah, what the problem was, what it was that you were… But my interferences was, aha, misinterpreted, that’s all. I seem to have strengthened the connection, as it were, quite by accident, but I— I believe I can put it right.”

“You’re an angel?” Drumknott asked hoarsely. “An _angel_? What order?”

Ezra blinked. “What— What order?”

“What order,” Drumknott repeated, doing his best to ignore the sense of rising panic running up his spine, and trying his best to concentrate on the details, the calming details, the details that would make up everything, “of angel are you?”

“Er, well,” Ezra said, drawing himself up to his full height, which was only a few inches more than Drumknott, and didn’t seem to have an especial effect on him. “I’m a Principality, if you must know.”

“A Principality,” Drumknott repeated, with more apparent understanding than Ezra really liked. “And you, you’re not an angel.”

“Why not?” Anthony asked, but he was smirking, and his indignation was plainly pantomime. Drumknott wondered if he’d be able to get home, like this. If there was an angel, leaning in the lines, he didn’t know how he might possibly… Could the wizards retort? Could they…?

He didn’t know. He’d read the Omnian holy texts as a matter of course, knew the mythology of angels and demons as well as he did any other aspect of religious history or alternative belief. On the Disc, it was useful to have a literacy with other people’s gods, regardless of whether you worshiped them or not: it wasn’t the same as Earth, not at all. Not like this.

“You’re from Pandemonium?” Drumknott asked, remembering a thousand idle conversations with wizards on the University campus, about demons and Hell, about Hell’s unusual geography… “Or Dis?”

Anthony’s smirk disappeared, and it dropped off his face: he dragged his sunglasses off, and he took a step forward, to look at Drumknott properly. The pupils of his eyes widened, dilating to let in more light, like a cat’s, or a snake’s.

“How do you know about those places?” he demanded in a hiss, leaning over Drumknott. He _was_ tall, and he leaned over him as if he thought Drumknott would be intimidated, but Drumknott was not in the nature of being intimidated, and hadn’t been for some twenty-five years.

“Pandemonium is the capital of Hell,” Drumknott said. “Every man with an education knows that. And Dis is a huge city, it’s—”

“ _Angel_ ,” Anthony said, turning to give Ezra a pointed stare, “when you said this _Disc_ place was weird, how weird, _exactly_ , did you mean? Because this is a bit beyond the everyday weirdness of _Freaky Friday,_ and is blooming into a weirdness I don’t know how to define.”

Rufus had never seen a film called _Freaky Friday_ : his and Havelock’s cinematic ventures were primarily concerned with films that had been made before 1950, barring the occasional biopic or documentary; Ezra had most certainly _not_ seen a film called _Freaky Friday_ , although Anthony had done his best to coax him to see the film when it had first been released, and had then attempted to bring him to see the remake.

Drumknott and Ezra both looked at Anthony blankly.

“Give me _strength_ ,” Anthony said. Most men would have rolled their eyes skyward while they said so; one might expect a man like Anthony to roll them downward. Anthony, having no especial loyalty in either direction, rolled them to the side. “Right,” he said. “We’re an angel and a demon, alright? But we’re… We’re _retired_ , you could call it. We’ve still got the energy signature even though we’ve not got the paperwork, which is why _muggins_ here accidentally triggered the connection between you and Rufus and strengthened it. It’s weighted in this direction – it’s like Aziraphale’s just put his finger on the scale.”

“How do you take it off?” Drumknott asked shortly.

“Er,” Anthony murmured.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, “I think— Well, I rather think that… Someone on the _other side_ would have to do the same thing.”

“A demon or an angel, you mean,” Drumknott said, very quietly. He was staring into the space in front of him, and his rosy cheeks had paled to a sickly, chalky white. His hands were clasped loosely in front of his stomach, and he looked as if his blood had run cold, which was alright, because it had. It was all he could do not to tremble. “Can’t you— You can’t wake me up? When I fall asleep tonight, I won’t go home?”

Aziraphale’s mouth was open, his lips opening and closing as he took a slow step forward. Guilt was obvious in his every movement. “That’s not the end of the world, dear boy,” he said earnestly, reaching out and touching the side of Drumknott’s arm. He gave Drumknott a comforting, warm smile. Had that always been his name, Drumknott wondered? Had Rufus… Rufus had suspected, that much was true, that something was off about Mr Fell and Mr Crowley, but this was somewhat beyond the pale. “I’m sure they’ll think of something, on your side, as you said, they might contact a demon—”

“Demons demand prices,” Drumknott said quietly, as a man mentioning the date of his execution.

“But angels don’t,” Aziraphale said.

“And why should an angel want for me to be drawn back from this universe? I’m a heathen, Mr Fell, in the eyes of Om and his angels: I worship Blind Io.”

“But you’re a good man, aren’t you?”

Drumknott stared at him. “What gives you that idea?” he asked, and Aziraphale leaned back, his lips parting. There was the understanding, between the two of them, that neither of them were exactly what they appeared to be, and the sense of control seemed to shift between them, reaching a new sense of balance.

“Rufus is… Rufus is a lovely man, he wouldn’t—”

“I’m not Rufus,” Drumknott said quietly. “I do complicated things with complicated people for the sake of simple people, who deserve to live their lives unmolested by the complicated. Complicated, however, is far from being good. I am not _good_ , Mr Fell.” Drumknott swallowed, and he thought about Vetinari.

Vetinari, who he’d… He’d been confused, half asleep, as he’d fallen, had he kissed his hand, or had that been Havelock? He didn’t know. But he remembered feeling faint and dizzy, remembered the way he’d fallen down…

“Drive me to this address,” Drumknott said, holding out a piece of paper, and Crowley peered at it.

“What’s that supposed to do?” he asked.

“Please,” Drumknott said. His tone was polite: his eyes were like steel.

Crowley, a demon, looked at Aziraphale. Aziraphale, an angel, looked back.

They shared a shrug, and Aziraphale picked up his coat.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“Professor Hix didn’t remember anyone by those names,” Rincewind said, shaking his head as the wizards settled around the infirmary on dragged-in chairs from other places. He, like everyone else, kept nervously glancing toward the Patrician, who was seated directly beside Mr Drumknott’s bed. Now and then, he would touch him.

It was only little things, here and there, but Rincewind noticed them: sometimes, he would reach out and brush a little of the clerk’s hair back from his face, although it was slicked back with unguent and didn’t need brushing back; sometimes, he would reach out and adjust the sheets and blankets slightly, where they lay over his body. Once, Rincewind saw him gently touch his thumb to the inside of Drumknott’s wrist, his fingers brushing the back of his hand.

But…

But no, of course, he must only have been checking his pulse. Vetinari wouldn’t touch Drumknott’s hand just to _touch_ it, he wouldn’t…

Dripp was asleep, and fallen forward against Whittle’s bed, his forehead pressed against the other wizard’s hand. His breathing was even and slow, and for once, he breathed without releasing any wet snuffles or bubbling pops. His breathing was unencumbered, and he no longer sat up suddenly with choking gasps when he found his nose too blocked in sleep.

“And we sweeped through the other file rooms, but there was no sign of anything,” the Lecturer in Recent Runes said, glancing toward the door as Professor Hoo rolled in a drinks trolley. It was very useful to have a mixologist on the staff, at times. Bottles and glasses clinked quietly together as he took a few steps forward, and he took up his cocktail shaker.

Rincewind took the Fourecksian cocktail he couldn’t remember the name of when it was proffered to him, and he sipped at it, enjoying how sickly-sweet it was, how easily it lingered on his tongue. It was cold, and sweet.

“Would you like anything, your— your lordship?” Professor Hoo asked, uncertainly.

“No, thank you,” Vetinari murmured. Rincewind turned to look at him, and noticed Vetinari smoothing out the sheet beside Drumknott’s leg.

One could get in a lot of trouble noticing things, and so he rapidly turned his head away.

“Ezra Fell,” the Dean repeated, tapping his fingers upon his leg, which he was bouncing the knee of, and tapping the foot of. This manoeuvre caused the whole thing to quiver gelatinously under the skirt of his robe. “Ezra Fell… Sent it out on the clacks, we did, to ask the other Universities, er… Hopefully, you know— And Crowley. Anthony Crowley—”

Professor Hoo dropped the Vigorous Exercise on the Beach he had been making for Ridcully[4], and the glass smashed on the tile.

“Hoo!” snapped the Archchancellor.

“What!?” exclaimed the Bursar.

“No, _Hoo_ ,” said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.

“Oh, _why?”_ wailed Hoo, his hands over his eyes.

“Because of you, Hoo!” bellowed the Dean, pulling his feet up and out of the way of his boots. Ponder Stibbons swiftly set about cleaning up the mess with a tea towel from Hoo’s trolley, and Hoo breathed heavily, trembling slightly.

“Crowley, did you say?” he asked. “Anthony Crowley?”

“ _You_ know him?” Dean demanded.

“He’s a demon,” Hoo said. “That… I told you, before, I looked at one of those files, and it was from one of the demonic cities, and they’d neatly… But they mentioned a demon who was in the field, another demon. His name was Anthony Crowley, Anthony J. Crowley.”

“What sort of name is _that_ for a demon?” demanded the Dean, in the voice of one who got rather offended when things didn’t exactly match his expectations. This was, after all, the whole point of expectations. It was why he liked to have them.

“I don’t know,” Hoo said quaveringly.

“Demons don’t have names like _Anthony_ ,” snapped the Lecturer in Recent Runes, baffled and annoyed. “They have names like Astfgl, and Beelzemoth, and things like that, not… Not _Anthony_.”

“Well!” Hoo snapped. “That’s— It said he _was_ named Anthony, it had his name down. Anthony J. Crowley, I saw it, I saw it, I can’t get it out of my _head_.”

“Our next course of action is clear, then,” said the Patrician from directly behind Hoo’s shoulder, and Hoo yelped, stumbling and falling into Rincewind’s lap. Rincewind yelped in kind, confronted with a lapful of warm, drunken wizard, and he flapped his arms uselessly about, unsure if he should try to touch Hoo or not. The Patrician gave no sign of having noticed. “We summon the demon Crowley.”

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

In the car, Drumknott sat on the backseat, and he didn’t wince, didn’t shudder at how fast the car rattled over the road. His gaze was directly forward, and Aziraphale and Crowley shared a glance from the two front seats.

“So you were always this,” Drumknott said lowly. “You were always an angel, and a demon.”

“There was a sort of— A big hullaballoo, er, in 1990,” Aziraphale said quietly. “After it happened, we chose to retire from our respective offices. We bought the house in Chesterton-Burnleigh, Crowley sold his flat up here in London…”

“You gave up your work,” Drumknott said, his voice slightly stiff with a disapproval Aziraphale didn’t like, and that Crowely liked even less, “for one another.”

“We’re in love,” Crowley said, raising his chin. “Nothing wrong with that.”

Drumknott thought about Vetinari.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said kindly, “work is important too, if you, er, haven’t got an equivalent to Havelock, in your universe.” There was a note of condescension in his voice that was probably not meant to be there, and Drumknott ignored it, but Crowley opened his mouth, and then closed it again, apparently thinking better of arguing with his partner… which he had.

“He’s my employer,” Drumknott said. “He rules… Our equivalent of London. Patrician, we call it: you’d call it, ah, president, or governor. I’m his personal clerk.”

“Is that all?” Aziraphale asked.

Drumknott’s gut was a mess of anxiety, and he said quietly, “I might never be able to go home. I may be trapped here, with… with _Havelock_. A perfectly kind man, you understand, a perfectly pleasant one, but not the man I know.” He dragged his thumb over the side of his palm, swallowing.

“I’m sure it’ll be alright,” Aziraphale said, but guilt shone out of his face like light, and Drumknott stared down at his own knees. “On the other side, they can just—”

“They can’t just _anything_ ,” Drumknott muttered. “I may well be trapped here, Mr Fell, entirely as a result of your curiosity.”

Aziraphale pressed his lips together. His cheeks were flushed, and he looked pained. “I have faith—”

“I don’t share your faith,” Drumknott snapped, in a way that Rufus had never before, and Aziraphale jolted in his seat, turning back to look at him. “My god has no place here, Mr Fell, so enjoy your faith as you will, pray as you might, and remember it is a privilege I lack because of you.”

There was a moment’s silence. “He’s got a point, you know,” Crowley said. “I did say—”

“Oh, _shut up_ ,” Aziraphale said.

Silence reigned as they drove on.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

Horace moaned softly into Henry’s mouth as Henry kissed him, his fingers curled in Horace’s long hair, tugging at it, running his fingers through it. Their thighs were entangled, and they were kissing lazily, the television flickering beside them. Gandalf had just shown up again, but in white robes instead of grey ones… They were _good_ , these movies, and this whole television thing. Henry liked it, liked it awfully: he loved all the different stories, all the different tales, the _characters_ …

And he liked how easy it was to watch them… Together.

He and Dripp studied together, of course.

They studied together, and would sometimes sit across from one another in the library, with their feet entangled under the table, with Dripp’s feet rubbing absently against Henry’s ankle. Sometimes, they’d lie in bed together, and Henry would balance his book on Dripp’s back, read aloud from it so that Dripp could hear too, but—

But this, with the television, the movies, they could just put it on and curl up together to watch it, could both see the same thing, and they could _hear_ it, and it was… It was wonderful. And this, this—

Well. Henry didn’t think they could read from a book and kiss at the same time, not that he was really paying attention to the film right now.

Horace’s lips were warm and soft, and they had been kissing for some time, the wet noise of their lips and tongues joining in with the music and the dialogue from the television, and Horace let out such soft sighs, relaxing underneath Henry and feeling his weight on top of him.

Could it be like this, with Dripp?

They kissed, they kissed a lot, but never… They kissed like this, certainly, in the middle of the night, when they were meant to be asleep, but Dripp kissed Henry all day long. If they met one another in the halls at the university, where Dripp enthusiastically threw himself at his research, and Henry reluctantly attended his glasses, Dripp would catch him in the corridors, just to kiss him. Kiss his face, his cheeks, his ears, his chin, his jaw. He would hug Henry, and beam at him, and touch him…

They sat together right outside on the quad, with Dripp sprawled in Henry’s lap. Where people could see them! And no one even batted an eyelid, or seemed to notice. And Dripp was not _popular_ , exactly, but no one looked at him with revulsion or disgust. No one avoided him.

He was just so—

 _Clean_.

And Henry was willing to withstand Dripp’s drippiness, willing to wake up soaked with him… He helped change the sheets in their room, sometimes, back at the university, because they were just so bad, but sometimes, sometimes, they bathed together, took a hot bath or a shower and he saw, just— Just _fragments_ of how…

Not that he didn’t like Dripp. Or… No. No, he didn’t _like_ Dripp, just that he was, that _they_ were together, and it wasn’t like this, here, it wasn’t romantic, like it was for Horace and _his_ Henry…

That would be nice, though.

They’d never been like this, Dripp and Henry, it had always been… It had never been _romantic_. It had never been like this, it had been, you know, they’d just sort of fallen into it. Dripp had crawled into Henry’s bed one night, when he’d been upset about something, and Henry had let him, because he’d been so warm, and they’d just fallen into it, and then it had been the both of them. They didn’t _talk_.

But Horace _did_ talk.

He said, “Oh, Henry, I love you, Henry, I love you,” while kissing his face. He chattered about _Lord of the Rings_ and about _Star Trek_ and about the complicated physics and mathematics he did at university, most of which went entirely over Henry’s head. He rambled on about things he had seen in shops or on television or heard on the radio, or talked about something the other PhDs had been talking about…

He talked about his _family_. He said what his sisters had been up to, and what his mother had text him, and what was in the family group chat. He talked about wanting a cat, _really_ wanting a cat, but thinking that perhaps they couldn’t have a cat, because he really did get anxious about their effect on the environment, Henry, but what if they kept it as an inside cat, could they give a cat enough stimulation? What if we moved somewhere else, would that be hard? Oh, Henry, he’d say, oh, Henry, I desperately want a cat, Henry—

It would be nice, he thought.

Not… Not just to have a cat, no, but to just…

To be like this. With _his_ Dripp.

To talk…

His musings and idle kissing were interrupted by a loud pounding at the door, and he groaned, sitting up from Dripp, who let out a wordless whine and wound his arms around Henry’s neck. “Don’t, it’s the middle of the night,” Dripp groaned, “it’s just someone knocking on the wrong door—”

Henry patted Dripp’s side and stood up from the sofa, hearing the movie pause as he moved toward the door, and opened it.

“Oh,” Henry said. “H— Hello, Mr Drumknott.”

“Mr Whittle,” said Mr Drumknott tersely. He was holding himself very stiffly, dressed in a neat suit, his hair combed neatly in its usual style, albeit without the usually present glasses. Henry looked from Mr Drumknott to the men behind him.

One of them was a fat man in his fifties, with white-blond hair in loose, lank curls about his face, and he was dressed in an extremely thick, brown jumper, with a camel coat over the top; the other was a square-figured man in his thirties, slick and dark-haired, wearing a black suit, sunglasses (it was _two-thirty in the morning)_ and snakeskin shoes.

“Enjoying yourself?” Drumknott asked in a dread whisper.

Henry fought the desperate urge to run away, and followed Drumknott’s gaze down to the vicinity of his own navel. Henry was wearing only a pair of boxers – so _comfortable_ , underwear was so _comfortable_ here – and one of Horace’s satin kimonos[5], which was just a little bit too tight on him, and that he hadn’t bothered to tie the belt of.

“Er, well, Mr Drumknott, how did you get h—”

“I’m _trapped_ here, like you,” Drumknott said. “May we come in?”

“Who’s this, Henry?” Horace asked, and Henry tried to remember if he was wearing _anything_ as he came up behind him and laid his chin against Henry’s shoulder, leaning down to wrap his skinny arms around him and squeeze him tightly.

Drumknott stared at the approximation of Dripp.

It was one thing, of course, to see Horace Dripp slightly cleaned up, and leaking a little less prodigiously. However, when one was used to seeing Dripp in what one had always believed was his natural form, liquids of unknown consistency and staggering proportion eking from his every pore (let alone his every orifice), seeing Dripp entirely clean, and _dry_ , was boggling.

Thus, Drumknott boggled.

That is to say, his eyes widened by a fraction of a measure, and his default expression of blank disapproval gave way to blank surprise. Drumknott was not a believer in emoting at the level other people did – he felt it excessive and inappropriate even in private.

“Um, this is— This is Mr Drumknott, he’s, er—”

“I’m here to discuss some legal things with Mr Whittle,” Drumknott said smoothly, as behind him, Aziraphale and Crowley raised their eyebrows. “A great uncle of his has died, and there is an issue over inheritance. I do apologise for the lateness of the hour, but as Mr Francis’ executor, I must—”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Horace said, stroking his fingers down Henry’s back and making him shiver. “I need to go to bed anyway, me and Ponder are going to Manchester for that convention. Unless you want me to stay up with you?”

Much like Dripp and Henry in real life, Horace seemed to be the main person who was… _sensible_ , and in charge, although this was not saying much, as neither Dripp nor Henry excelled at being sensible or being in charge, outside of their own specific bubble. With that said, Henry was more of the natural caretaker between them, on the Disc and on Earth.

Take now, for example.

Henry, all his life, had been perfectly accustomed to the fact that people often found him forgettable, often didn’t take much interest in him, Dripp aside. Girls had found him handsome, and he’d even kissed a few, before he’d come to university, but it was always the sort of kiss given to the boy you _weren’t_ quite as interested in, no, but he was, at the least, available, and relatively nice.

He was not a can-do sort of man. With this Earth mix-up, he had reasonably assumed that someone else would fix it – probably Dripp, who tended to fix everything that Henry needed fixing – and that he could just enjoy the situation as it unfolded.

He hadn’t expected the Patrician’s scary clerk to show up on his doorstep.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Henry said hurriedly, not wanting to inflict Mr Drumknott on an innocent bystander, and cupping Horace’s cheek. “You go to bed, we’ll be quiet.”

“Love you!” Horace chirruped, and kissed his mouth… and then for good measure, his nose. Henry smiled.

“Love you too,” he echoed, and he watched after Horace as he walked back to bed.

Yeah. Yeah, he was…

Completely naked. Henry stared at his arse, which was skinny, but nonetheless an arse he was very fond of (and growing fonder of as the days on Earth passed), as he walked confidently down the corridor, closing the door to the bedroom with a click.

“Nice boy,” the man in sunglasses said, grinning.

Henry gave an awkward grin. “Um, who are these guys?”

“Inside,” Drumknott said, and Henry stepped reluctantly back to allow them in.

**♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔** **☩** **♔**

“They’ll be able to do the summoning tomorrow morning, they said,” Ridcully said as he re-entered the Infirmary.

The sun was beginning to set over Ankh-Morpork, and the octarine light that lingered on the air around the University was catching at the light of the sunset. Dripp had been dragged away from the Infirmary by Mr Lockheed, and judging by the dampness of his hair, which stuck out from beneath his hat, and the fact that his face was now mostly clean, although not _entirely_ clean, of grime, he had dragged a washcloth over his face. His eyes were a funny colour, Ridcully noticed, like someone had poured silver into them. It wasn’t a common colour, Ridcully didn’t think, but he didn’t think it was from the magic – it could well have been natural. One never knew. Dripp was currently talking quietly to Whittle’s unconscious form, murmuring almost directly in the ear, in the hope he might hear him perhaps.

Ridcully thought he heard the word “love”, and chose not to listen any further.

Wasn’t any of his business.

The Patrician was sitting straight-backed beside Mr Drumknott’s bed, and he was reading aloud from what sounded like a report, but as he was doing it in fluent and easy Brindisian, Ridcully didn’t have a clue what it was he was saying.

The Patrician was not, in the moment, having an easy time of it.

Nothing showed in his face, but Vetinari’s stomach was roiling with anxious nausea, and he did not feel able to concentrate on aught about him: it would have been fine, were he able to _do_ anything, but he was not. There were no options available to him, but to wait and see what the wizards might come up with, and Drumknott—

What _did_ he feel for young Drumknott?

The man had kissed his palm. Kissed his palm, his nose brushing against the top of it, his lips warm and soft, his breath warm against Vetinari’s skin, and Vetinari’s heart had _leapt_ : it still felt as if it was leaping.

What would he do, if Drumknott was lost, to this Earth, to this other Vetinari, all but dead to him?

He didn’t want to lose him. Drumknott was more than his mere personal clerk, after all: he was a close confidante, a dear friend, a _loved_ one, even, even before this complicated barrage of emotion that now made itself known in his chest, that now seemed to envelop his concentration quite entirely.

And that kiss…

Had he meant to?

If he had meant to, if he had… It was wrong of him, perhaps – no, not perhaps, _most certainly_ – to even think of ruining the young man’s life with Vetinari’s attentions, to render him so intimately connected to a man so many years his senior, and so dangerous, but were they not intimately connected, anyway?

Assuming Drumknott was amenable. If he was—

If he was…

“You know,” Vetinari said aloud to Ridcully, who sunk slowly into an armchair he drew up to Drumknott’s bed, beside the Patrician, “when he celebrates things, or when he’s recently been through a particularly rough ordeal, he’ll buy himself a— I’m sure it has some twee street name, but he’ll buy a bottle of root beer from a café near his childhood home, and then put ice cream in it.”

“Root beer float,” Ridcully supplied, uncomfortable with the Patrician’s line of conversation. It sounded _sentimental_ , was what it sounded, and while Ridcully was more aware than many of the Patrician’s ability to be sentimental, it wasn’t necessarily an awareness he cherished.

“Quite,” Vetinari said, glancing at Ridcully before looking back to Drumknott, his report settled loosely on his lap. “At the end of all of this,” Vetinari decided, feeling that if he didn’t say it aloud, that another person might hear him, that he would not follow through, “I shall take him there.”

Spouses kept one another accountable, he thought distantly. That was rather what spouses were for: one checked one another, and one supported one another through…

“They say they’ll be able to do the ritual at midnight,” Ridcully said. “And then, well, hopefully, it will all be… you know, this demon, he might be able to help us find the file, or might be able to fix the problem himself.”

“No sign of the file?” Vetinari asked.

“None,” Ridcully said.

Very slowly, Vetinari stood from Drumknott’s bedside. “I’m going to go down to Room XB,” he said quietly. “Will you sit with him?”

“’Course,” Ridcully said. He ought have told the Patrician not to, perhaps, told him he oughtn't touch the piano or the files, that they didn't know what would happen, but... He  _was_ the Patrician. And he looked  _worried_. 

"Thank you, Mustrum," Vetinari said quietly, and he moved like a ghost from the Infirmary, his hands just slightly clenched at their sides, and Ridcully stared after him as he went.

 

[1] Most dogs would take advantage of a long lead to run off as far as they were able and get into mischief. Mr Fusspot, an animal naturally inclined to indolence, liked a long lead, as it allowed him to sit down for longer before inevitably being dragged across the ground.

[2] Even in sleep and having been carried from the Palace, not a hair was out of place on his head.

[3] In fairness to the Bank Chairman, this is the experience of almost every other Ankh-Morpork citizen.

[4] He didn’t approve of sex on beaches by anybody, least of all by himself, but felt they were very appropriate for jogging.

[5] Horace wore a _lot_ of satin, and very little else, when they were at home together. Henry was kind of desperate, when they got out of this, to see if Dripp might be convinced to do the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I almost _never_ write in the past tense, so please let me know if there's anywhere in this fic where I've slipped and used the present tense instead. I'm also not used to the head-hopping, but I'm really going for a book-esque feel in this fic, so I hope that comes across! Totally leave any feedback you have: I'm super excited about this AU, because it's still very emotionally repressed, but slightly less emotionally repressed than my other Drumknott/Vetinari fic, haha. I'm always so eager to hear people's feedback!
> 
> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). Requests always open.
> 
> I run a [Discworld Comm](https://onthedisc.dreamwidth.org/), and there's also [a Discord right here.](https://discord.gg/b8Z3ThH)


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